


The Brown in His Eyes

by 13letters



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adoption, Coming of Age, F/M, Football, Growing Up, Modern AU, Pain, Romance, Slow Burn, non-linear timeline, seriously the slowest burn there is like nearly 200k words of this shameless story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 84,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22149277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: "Life's not like a movie, kid," despite the hundreds they've watched on either of their room's floors over the years, the parts of the scary ones they'd reenact when he helped her through her going-to-be an actress phase, and the way she's really looking at him now.(Andno, Rey thinks, life isn't, because oh, if it was like a film and she was still sitting here in this ancient car under an angry and open and honest sky weeping for the poetry of unrequited love when it's for someone older and brilliant and wonderful, it'd be different, and all his smiles would be for her, and he'd have one hand on her heart, the other on the steering wheel.They'd kiss and it'd feel like fire, feel likeforever, and she's only just sixteen, but he's watched her turn nine, and he'll see her turn nineteen, and if life was like a movie, then he'll turn to her any minute and say,"I've loved you the entire time."She lets herself wait ten seconds. ThenI'm sorry, she wants to say.)"Fuck you," she mutters instead.
Relationships: Ben Solo/Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey
Comments: 17
Kudos: 35





	1. one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a repost! I've got six or so more chapters to upload, but I'm stopping with these seven chapters for now. I hope y'all enjoy! Be brave and stay tender. X

She's training to run a marathon.

Poe has a video of him eating fourteen Taco Bell taco supremes in six minutes and thirteen seconds.

He's twenty-one somehow.

He got past so many fucking, like. Things. Trying to make this so damned hard.

He has a scar just under his temple, a memory hidden beneath one of his eyebrows and how angry his mom was that he didn't call her before calling 911 because he was twelve and bleeding and Poe had never said _shit_ so many times before then. They were driving a four-wheeler without supervision like Han deliberately told him not to, told him six times, but he figured because he'd been driving the _Falcon_ with his dad before he could walk -- he knew what he was doing.

He just knows now that his dad was the one controlling the pedals, and life makes a lot of sense when you're making lines on the highway and following opposite railroad tracks, seeing nothing in the rearview mirror but brown hair flying out of a bandanna and his sunglasses looking over at him when he starts to laugh.

"What?" Rey grins at him, full-lit like an airstrip or Vegas, maybe, and maybe he could try his luck there.

"Thinking," he answers noncommittally, out one side of his mouth and out the window, his fingers absently reaching over to turn down the radio since she always turns it up so loud. Fall Out Boy on one of his old CDs, one she borrowed when she was eleven and never gave back with half his VCR tapes and the hoodie she stole that'd been through the wash one too many times.

"About what?" she challenges. She knows well enough by now he won't get annoyed when she props her feet up on the dash, over the compartment that he has crinkled road maps, a stolen pair of sunglasses, a souvenier dinosaur, napkins, and a knife contained in it. But the song she loves comes on next, the one he fucking had to listen to for the six straight hours she wouldn't leave him alone one day, and she shouts out the window like a crazy freed prisoner, sixteen years old and turning up the music, hitting his arm so he'll take the hint to sing, but no, nope, not a chance, there's so much wind hitting his face and his cheeks are starting to ache from smiling.

They've driven past most the places he used to hang around and smoke when he was stupider, concrete that had its fair share of his blood or someone else's, and this small town's gone grey and windy and miserable, sure, it's just brighter in here than he figured it'd be.

She's Facetimed his mom twice, has phoned her mom for a nonconsecutive hour somewhere on this road before and after McDonald's and way after a gas station and a shared bag of Skittles that took them seven minutes to decide on.

 _"Pepsi?"_ she asked him just because she knew he fucking hated it, because she has to drink water and Gatorade and has been since six this morning when she woke him up and he begged her to leave him to die.

"Just a couple more hours," he assures her, breathing deep, breathing in the scent of petrichor that might have been a downpour a few miles away from here. It's been twenty minutes since he drove by a new border, the white welcome sign the farthest he ever got to running away when he was sixteen and not at all like she is now, bare feet and one of his old CC hoodies with the torn neck because it was suffocating. Fall Out Boy has been replaced with Taylor Swift, and Christ. "I'll leave you at the next rest stop."

"You won't," she smiles so quick he didn't see it coming. "You offered to drive me to the track meet, remember."

"Yeah," he laughs, checking the rear view mirror out of habit. It's a three hour drive that's taking them a little more than four because fun fact: they don't make good time, they're both sorta idiots when it comes to things like this. Driving. Dinner. Reruns of _One Tree Hill_ since she never hesitates to cry for Lucas and Peyton and how unfair their fictional world is for them.

Districts from all over are meeting somewhere east of the capitol so everyone can run and jump hurdles and vault poles for trophies and too much cardio, and it's stupid, yeah, it really, really is. But he likes this more than old football games and peppy jocks and his senior year of high school. Rey also just about cried when he let her have three of his four hash-browns an hour and a half ago, so this drive is already worth it.

It is.

He's not thinking about his boss and how murder would totally be a problem solver if he wasn't too pretty for jail and more or less morally ambiguous. The only lawyer he knows would probably put him in jail anyways, but Rey let him rant about the promotion he deserved and the people that pissed him off before she laughed before the sound was sucked out the window with all this dry air and _Summer of '69_ playing between them. Her knees are her drums, and no matter how many times he tells her he doesn't want to see her go through the windshield if they crash since her feet are on the dash, she's so quick to remind him how the _Falcon_ is invincible.

How it didn't even get a scratch when he rear-ended some rich kid's car _accidentally_ his junior year because the guy was rude to Poe and tried to get him expelled for the senior prank he definitely wasn't involved in since his grandmum was in the hospital.

"If you don't fucking win anything," he starts, merging into the left lane, speeding past a semi-truck that's in the way.

"I will," she huffs, annoyed because she's brilliant and he should know it. He's never actually been to one of her meets before, though, hasn't really come home. She changes to track seven on this old CD, plays _Mister Brightside_ like it's six years ago, and he laughs.

\- -- - -- -

He's so distracted a few weeks later that it's muscle-memory to answer his vibrating phone instead of the common sense to check the caller ID.

Who today? Someone calling about loans? IRS? His dad?

A second, though, is all it takes for his mind to be thinking excuses for why he's missed wherever he was supposed to be at in case this is his mom and.. Christmas definitely hasn't happened yet. He's sure of that at least.

But the voice is more quiet, softer than the beat of guilt and the justifiable want to say he's busy, _sorry_. Jesus, you spend three hours on the phone with your old man after midnight and he thinks you're friends.

 _"Don't hang up,"_ Rey orders him sweetly, and he's already up, already closing his textbooks, already letting go of the absent tension cutting into him, absent clenches of his fists, rigid shoulders. _"How busy are you right now?"_

"That depends," he answers, his laugh a nose exhale when she huffs. He can practically see the face she's making, never mind there's a timezone she doesn't know is between them. "Why?"

_"Wondering."_

"Yeah," he mutters, well. He hasn't been too busy to talk to her since he was fourteen or so. Maybe sixteen. She still is. "I know I missed my dad's birthday," he remembers suddenly.

 _"I was there when you called,"_ she tells him softly, the rustle of something heard through the phone. Blankets, maybe. _"It was a different area code than ours,"_ but she doesn't sound accusing, just.. wondering.

"My phone was dead."

 _"Where are you?"_ she asks him, like she's still expecting him to be seventeen and running parallel to railroad tracks, just going on foot and one bad decision on another one. They piled up like dirty clothes, left everything a little raw.

"With a friend," he answers after a beat too long, not too sure why it's so hard to say when it's not that big a deal. It tastes like stale beer all the same and a bad cigar all the same. "Sorta."

_"Anyone I know?"_

"My uncle."

 _"Oh,"_ she gasps, a quiet little exhale through the phone, tucked in the crook of his neck, soft in the shell of his ear. _"Luke? I've seen pictures."_

"Yeah, I'll Snapchat more to you," he tells her, rolling his eyes, waiting for her laugh.

It's inevitable, and it's quiet, and the way she sighs is.. sweet somehow, a breath he exhales with her, a three minute long conversation that's really not much of anything. Not life-changing. Not anything too altering. Just normal routine that's nice to have. He knows how she's relaxing tension-free like when he starts to smile.

"Your day's been okay?" he asks her.

 _"My week's sucked, actually,"_ she contradicts him, but he's sure of the grin he hears. She's probably doing that thing with her bottom lip. He --

Doesn't know where that thought's come from.

"I'm sorry," he frowns, glancing up when Uncle Luke steps into the kitchen.

_"Yeah. Good night, Ben."_

\- -- - -- -

She's still sixteen when he's back to being an adult, back to settling down when he did all he could to keep from running.

He's driving her around in the _Falcon_. Her cheeks are pink and her eyes are bright and her toes are painted as blue as his Converse, crossed in her seat, and she's complaining about something. Looking so peeved that it makes him laugh full out of his mouth and into the windshield.

"And why do people say they're 'just wondering' when there's obviously a reason why?" she continues, as annoyed as ever. Her mouth's a set line before she sucks her bottom lip between her teeth in aggravation-turned-worry, and oh, he knows this look, already starts to shake his head.

"Nope."

"You don't know what I'm going to say!" she protests, turning in the old leather seat to face him. Her seat belt stalls, locks, and his eyes flicker to hers in dark warning when she just goes ahead and unbuckles it.

"Put that back on."

"I will."

"Rey," he starts, teeth grit, eyes conscious on the road for the safety of not having to see her head through the windshield. "Will you just --"

"He thinks you're my boyfriend," she blurts out, so quick he must have heard wrong but nearly swerved into a truck in the next lane anyways.

"What?"

"Yeah," and she laughs, outright giggles like a new penny-polished nervous wreck.

Glancing over to her anxious tick, her fingers curling through her hair, he -- he has no fucking clue. He's blindsided. He has no idea what she's going on about, dismissing like a joke when her smile screams she's hurt.

She's still so sixteen. She's reaching for all of it and doesn't even know how to ask or go ahead and take.

"He thinks," she repeats, loud and then quiet now that they're slowing to red traffic lights, "that you're, uh. Kinda my boyfriend? I know," she hurries to continue, gesturing to the face he's sure he's making. He's getting all tense, glowering straight ahead. "It's stupid."

"Who's _he_?"

That makes her giggle, fluttery and loud. "Uh. The prom guy. David."

And just like that, his smile's as cracked as her voice was on the phone when she asked him to pick her up that night. "That son of a bitch." His knuckles are taut white on the steering wheel, everything that was a joy ride boiling up to anger crushing his sternum hot, because that dick. Who did he fucking -- "Rey," he growls, reigning in an angry breath, all his murderous thoughts. His eyes are thinking felony, seeing her crying in the passenger seat again with ruined hair and a torn sleeve, and it -- it hurts, that look on her face. "Didn't you dump his ass?"

"I wasn't really dating his ass," she murmurs, pushing his scratched sunglasses further up the bridge of her nose. "I don't talk to him, but we have the same friends."

"Get new friends."

"His friends think you're my boyfriend," but she says it so quietly. Like an apology bruising into his fists. Tucking into his smile.

Shrugging, he glances to her to see if she's brave enough for eye contact, but she's watching him curl his long fingers though his hair, her soft brown eyes a faint impression behind his Aviators. "I'll still kill him," he offers. He wants to laugh, wants to punch out someone's teeth. He wants a cigarette, so instead takes her _Kum & Go _Coke and swallows the ache of the last year away.

Without thinking, she reaches out to timidly trace a prominent vein down his forearm, angry and white on his skin. It -- her hand's soft. She shifts in her seat anxiously when he grips the steering wheel tighter, her voice so quiet, "Don't be mad," like he really -- shit.

"Rey."

"Don't," she repeats instead of her dime a dozen _sorry_. Her brown hair's sticking to her lipgloss. She looks torn between a smile and a wince. "I just thought I'd tell you," she murmurs, edging straight-forward and overly informative. It's the same tone she always uses right after she admits something that shakes her up and wants to stay buried, but she's determinedly staring out the window now, and he -- he sees her.

\- -- - -- -

She's still sixteen, but he's still twenty-one and trying to hold this moment open, barefoot and trying so _hard_ , oh, God, with his dad in the kitchen and winter break dusting everything that was red a clean white, with his arms spread as wide as his grin and his stomach full of gingerbread.

Rey spins the arrow to right foot on blue, and he and Poe and Finn are starfished and getting to know each other _real_ well. Finn's right leg is looped over his neck to stretch to blue, Poe's straddling him as delicately as the PG rating of their Disney marathon earlier, but Rey just can't stop laughing, her grin like Christmas already.

It was just yesterday she ran into him and Han at Walmart two hours past midnight since the bar closed, yet guilt wasn't resignation, and he.. he was really starting to miss Han. His dad. He's happy he made the phone call.

Or was until Poe suggested they play _Twister_.

He'd been complaining to Poe about Han and the _Falcon_ when enough became enough and he was asked _why not just get rid of the car, then_ , among things, and it was a good plan the fifteen seconds before he thought about the look his dad would give him if he did. If it'd be disappointment or grief or anger. He thought about how the fucking car took him where running away couldn't, and it might have been a piece of junk, yeah, definitely still is, but his dad never gave up on him when he broke a little.

Or something.

It was stupid, that thought, looking in the mirror and thinking he was a piece of garbage, too, but it came really quick. It came like guilt that wasn't resignation but kinda like love, and his mom hugged him for seven straight minutes when he came home.

Now Poe's face is in his armpit, and Finn's trying to get his left hand over two people to get to red, and Rey just looks so happy they're all here and the object of all her pictures.

"Big toe on yellow," she beams, scrunching her nose right back at him.

"That's not a choice," he huffs. She's upside down to him, cross-legged on a couch pillow and tapping her finger on the arrow that decides all their fate.

"Just do it," says Poe. He's breathing hard and his arms are starting to shake. "I won't give up."

"You won't last three more turns," Finn laughs -- or tries to, he's just accidentally hit in the face by Ben's foot.

"Sorry." He's not. His left big toe is on yellow right next to his right hand, and he might dislocate a shoulder or a knee, but Rey is grinning at him. It's her smile after she finishes first in sprints or eats fries off his plate when he lets her think she's being secretive.

Something about it hits him hard.

Then Poe suddenly drops, both his arms folding beneath him and smashing his torso into one of Finn's knees.

"No!" he shouts like he's dying, and then they're like lewd dominos entangled in a heap on the sixteen year old _Twister_ mat that looks way more fun on Pinterest. Someone's laying painfully on his foot, but the swagger of footsteps he hears is his dad come in to make sure everyone's still alive.

Han just shouts that no one's decent and _why do this under my roof?!_ because Ben needed a reminder where his penchant for dramatics came in. Right.

Rey's still laughing like right in his ear, joining their mess of a dog pile.

\- -- - -- -

"You actually came," he says, or tries to. He has tissues in his nose and his arm in a splint and the ambulance guy was a little too generous with the morphine.

He's pretty sure he was the guy that used to sell Hux and his gang drugs in high school, but what's it matter when he's the one sitting in a room in the pediatric ward because apparently you have to actually be over twenty-one and not an idiot to be treated with dignity.

One of mom's friends is a kid doctor. The price of that is all the painted zoo animals silently judging him on the pastel muted turquoise and orange walls.

"What," Rey starts, inhaling a fuming breath and taking it all in, the very happy zebra on his left and the bloodied tissues and right, his probably black eye. "The hell."

"Bar fight," he grins, more like a smirk, his fingers absently skimming the tastefully accidental hole in his jeans, just above his left knee.

"It's almost one in the morning, Ben."

"Hey," he says, acutely feeling each inch of his face and his expressive eyebrows. He feels like his dad when reflex points his finger up at her accusingly. "I was stopping the fight."

That seems to soften her a bit, a very little bit, more instinct to have called her from the ambulance it was the bar's policy to call should an employee get involved amidst swinging fists and slurred breaths. Ignoring the two chairs and the monkey painted above them, she takes hold of his good arm and pulls herself up to sit next to him on the patient's table. "Did you win?" she whispers mischievously, quietly, a crinkle to her nose and sleep to her eyes. She crosses one knee over the other, Gryffindor pajama pants and old sweatshirt and all.

"Kinda," he grimaces, final taking the paper out of his nose with a poorly concealed wince.

"Do you hurt?" she frowns, looking like it's shaking her up, too. He might now think she feels like he did when she called him to the ER a year ago when soccer tryouts really did not go as well as she swears she intended.

Mmhmmm.

"No," he lies, feeling his mouth stretch up to a grin. He bumps her shoulder with his, but because she doesn't know about his side, she elbows him and he swears.

She's frantic and panic and apology all at once. "Oh, my God!" she shouts. "Oh, my God!" She flails her arms while he hugs himself and turns away, his ribs on _fire_ , and she keeps saying _no_ , presses her forehead to his left shoulderblade. "What'd I do? I'm so sorry!"

He grits his teeth. Kinda counts his blessings. "I'm fine."

"You're totally not!"

"I am," he relents a minute too slow. The words _don't worry, sweetheart_ were about to leave him, but her brown eyes are soft, and it's like another punch to the nose. "I already called my mom," he mumbles instead, something safe to say. "In case you were wondering."

She's bad about trying not to seem surprised, a noiseless gasp slacking her jaw and making her look at him differently. "You did?"

"I needed her to tell me my social security number."

And she laughs, but he was really just missing her. His mom. He hasn't seen her in almost a month, but thinking about it makes him wonder who he's punishing in that. Jesus.

"Thanks," he tells her seriously when she quiets, her bubbles of soft chortles ending with an inevitable snort. "For coming. I know it's late."

"Early," she grins, straight up to her eyes, heat flooding like molten into the brown and shining a bit. "But you come when I call you, so." Her laugh is quickly shy, but like a switch, she's jerking her arm and hugging it to herself.

She's always just really weird, whatever, except the side of his hand is colder on the flimsy paper covering on the table. He hasn't even realized they were a twist of their fingers away from holding hands.

The look on her face, though. She realized.

He exhales deeply around his headache, like the doc asked him to so they'd know his lungs hadn't been kicked in, and it's somewhere between too tired and too coherent. Way too light, and not long enough if the way she breathes him in like he might've died means anything when he wraps his arm around her shoulders and squeezes.

"You wanna go get some fries?"

\- -- - -- -

He's so close to twenty-two.

It's raining, streaks on the windshield, clouds grey and thunderous and wet like the most depressing funeral scenes in movies, the really sad ones that make Rey laugh like she did during _Spider-Man_.

Poe's considering growing a beard, kinda doesn't understand this whole "being an adult" thing either and still attends church knitting circles with his grandma when he's not single-handedly saving the Air Force. He also smokes now occasionally, but Ben had to teach him how to look cool while doing it.

Poe's taken to romanticizing the movie _Pearl Harbor_ , too, 'cause it's so easy to forget it fired the U.S. into a war when Ben Affleck wasn't the father of Evelyn's baby, but he's young, and he's angry at terrorists, and he hasn't forgotten about his mom and maybe wings mean more than just a plane to him.

Sometimes he tells Ben things like _you should join the service_ as mostly a joke when he's buying cheap beer at the hole he half-works at when he's not in school or at the garage, but telling Rey about it now, just so much wet pavement of road ahead of them, he does kinda think about the Army. His dad was kicked out of a military school, though. Or so he says.

"You'd give me your dog tags to wear, right?" she says so easily.

And even though it's raining and pretty dark for three in the afternoon, she's wearing his sunglasses. He thinks she's hiding from him. He just sees her anyways.

"Would you want 'em?"

"I don't know," she shrugs, yellow flip-flops in the floorboard, her knees bent so her feet are up on the dash. "I'd keep them safe, but you'd have to stay safe."

"Yeah," he says, impassively focusing on the road, driving slow. "I'd be, like. The band, not in open combat."

She snickers at him before she starts to cackle so hard she can't breathe. "It'd be so sweet." And romantic, yeah, all these young guys and old geezers out protecting a country that docks their pay and throws out dodge, but she's smiling like she's seeing it, whatever it is.

His tags around her neck and her eyes red, a canvas regulatory bag slung over his shoulder and a sad wave in the middle of an airport.

"Those are the stories that are usually sad."

See: Ben Affleck in _Pearl Harbor_.

"Still," she protests. Her smile's all for the window now, a victory considering she'd called him 'cause today was awful for her and he understood running away without going anywhere so maybe they could just. Drive.

Obviously, he says it, snarks it through his teeth. "You know I'm not joining the military." And because he's not as oblivious as she thinks he is, he takes his eyes off the road long enough for her to stare right back at him. "I couldn't leave you for that long."

"Right," she replies after a few long seconds, an awkward laugh she smooths over with her hair behind her left ear. "You'd be hopeless without me, right?"

"I'd be lost. You're, like. A tumorous growth or a sore or boil I can't live without anymore." He chuckles low when he feels her head snap to stare at him, but it's kinda dark, and they've nowhere to go and nowhere to be. She giggles quietly after seconds that stretch on and last long like the thunder, with its bruises so dark in the sky it's like he fought for them, and this is one of the most comfortable silences he's ever experienced. They're smiling and happy and he just drives.

It's not until she says something quiet, however, something about _being here_ that kinda rubs him raw. Like a close shave, like all his organs just right here out in the open.

"Life's not like a movie, kid," despite the hundreds they've watched on either of their room's floors over the years, the parts of the scary ones they'd reenact when he helped her through her going-to-be an actress phase, and the way she's really looking at him now.

(And _no_ , Rey thinks, life isn't, because oh, if it was like a film and she was still sitting here in this ancient car under an angry and open and honest sky weeping for the poetry of unrequited love when it's for someone older and brilliant and wonderful, it'd be different, and all his smiles would be for her, and he'd have one hand on her heart, the other on the steering wheel.

They'd kiss and it'd feel like fire, feel like _forever_ , and she's only just sixteen, but he's watched her turn nine, and he'll see her turn nineteen, and if life was like a movie, then he'll turn to her any minute and say, _"I've loved you the entire time."_

She lets herself wait ten seconds. Then _I'm sorry_ , she wants to say.)

"Fuck you," she mutters instead, slapping at his arm, and God, he can _see_ how annoyed she looks, that farce of disappointment that comes with casual and cruel honesty.

He doesn't even think, just smirks at the empty road ahead, her heavy sighs. "But _fuck me_ , right?" Because he is an ass, he won't deny it.

She doesn't say or do anything but change the radio to some country station he hates, and she swats his hand away when he goes to change it. "You're mean," she frowns, so pouty and pretty that it's full-force when she takes the shades off, turns in her seat so her cheek's on the headrest so she can watch him.

"I know," he smiles. It doesn't feel much like one. It makes her crack the tiny edge of one, though, and likely without thinking since she looks startled, she reaches outwards. He feels her fingers touching the mostly faded scar just under his hairline. "Rey," he says, after her moment of bravery and both her hands are resolutely in her lap and she's staring forward. "You're doing things to my head. I don't think you mean to," he tells her, "but you are."

"Am I?" she asks him or the windshield, she's still staring at it, but it's like a quiet secret of a serious joke, something he doesn't want to think about.

And he knows he probably looks like an idiot since when she looks her nose scrunches like she'll laugh at him. But he feels serious, and he's.. it hits him. Like lightning or common sense. "You're my best friend, Rey," he says, like it's the simplest thing in the world, rolling over him like thunder. "You are."

And that look on her face.

It's the same look that'll cross her face in a couple months, right after he kisses her.


	2. two

When Ben Organa Solo is born, it's mid-afternoon and sunny and frigid outside but _perfect_ , nothing but love and happiness in this standard hospital room, blinds slacked, a chair reclined and pushed right next to the bed.

It's like everything's glowing this soft light, all concentrated where a baby no bigger than both Han's hands is making these heart-wrenching little snuffling noises into Leia's neck.

Ben is wrapped is a baby blue blanket, tufts of dark hair, his mother's eyes, his father's nose already -- they can tell, Leia laughs, and she's _radiant_ and still sweaty and has gross hair and lines under her eyes, but lines next to her smile, too, and there's never been anything more beautiful in any moment on any part of the world.

Her feet are somewhere next to Han's knees, her fingers not holding their son twined tightly through Han's in this family they've built for themselves from the ground up, from all ten of those itty bitty perfect little baby toes up, and Ben is like an entire _world_ to them, and it was worth those nine months of her craving sardines and watermelon and shouting at Han when he smelled like oil and crying because she couldn't see her toes and just about melting when he'd pull her hair back from her face when nausea returned in the third trimester.

He screamed louder than she did at every contraction and push, might never regain feeling in his right hand where she'd squeezed, might honestly burn the Polaroid pictures of childbirth they thought would be a lovely scrapbooking idea.

But everything's so peaceful and warm and happy, such bliss here, and flowers and balloons and congratulations and faces slowly pile in one by one, Luke, Lando, Maz, Moff, an old friend from college and from the garage, Leia's snotty old grandmother figure that never liked him much, but everyone's smiling and _awwwing_ at this little bundle that's half Leia, half his remarkably brilliant genetics, and their family was always a little bigger than them and Leia's pregnant belly to start with.

Luke's just about crying harder than everyone else, all still smiling at little baby Ben Solo, so loved and so cherished already. All the world is going to be his one day; Han just knows he'll give this little pink bundle of tiny ten fingers and toes everything he'll ever want, and he'll be so _happy_. The most wonderful and blessed child in existence.

But then Ben woke up and started to wail.

\- -- - -- -

"What was your first kiss like?" she asks him. She's thirteen and thinking about it and really not sure if she's a masochist or an idiot or just going through the mindset that she can't wait around forever, really now, but it still unjustly churns her stomach a little.

It's like jealousy's a slow simmer that's hot but makes her chest feel.. _cold_ , y'know? Like there's a chill in her sternum that crushes it slowly, and she knows she's not entitled to even the slightest inclination of possession or jealousy when it comes to Ben, but the green monster's a lot better than heartbreak.

He pauses, though, and he looks down to his feet like she knows he does right before he lies -- but God, what doesn't she know about him when he tells her about his dreams and kicks down his walls and strides into her every thought with his ridiculous long legs and animated gestures? He's so close to nineteen.

She can't really catch up. She's tried her hardest, willed herself to get taller and be older and seem wiser like the black coffee she ordered as a pretense at Starbuck's, the drink that really confused the blonde barista because why wouldn't Ben and his dark persona have the bland drink?

He orders the very sweet, very pink passionfruit tea lemonade, though.

He says beverages don't have a gender.

He's really self-conscious about his mouth, too, how full his lips are, and that just -- that makes Rey want to cry when she thinks too much on it.

He's beautiful and he's perfect and she's biased, she's so biased, but the sun probably still rises and sets in his brown eyes, and she's romanticized him too much like Icarus one crash and burn too many for simply _more_ or his dad, and the world must be so heavy already on broad shoulders that hold it up. She thinks that maybe if he could see himself through her eyes, he'd smile bunches more so much that it'd curl his toes. She also thinks that if he could see himself through her eyes, though, he'd never want to see her again because this was not friendship. This was asking him about his first kiss when she maybe used to kinda dream that it'd be her.

"I don't know," he finally says after way too long, a lie that makes her groan since he's full of it.

"You do!"

"Ugh," he grimaces, disgust scrunching up his face. Some memories ought to be suppressed for reasons, and she's awful for it but she's happy the girl wasn't someone terribly important to him.

Jealousy and indifference don't need to mask today's heartbreak, unless he's been kissed so much he can't remember.

"I do," he admits, his long nose a scrunch that makes her smile. Rather obviously, she scooches her mom's kitchen chair closer to his on the wood floor, props her chin up in her hand up on the table for a show of listening to what has to be a brilliant story. "You think I'm gonna tell you?" he snarks.

'Cause he's remembering how he stuck out his hand like an idiot before he could remember he was too cool for shit like that, but then all he's thinking is how he hates lipgloss. Overpowering perfume. The way he didn't really feel much during those lame kisses unlike when his dad would talk his ear off about things like _special_ and how he got so light-headed the first time he kissed Leia, how he'd _just know_ when the moment was right and wonderful and stuff he'd tell his own kids about.

 _"Right,"_ Ben had said four years ago when he detached himself from the blonde and stepped back into a coat. He was thirteen, brought to this party by Poe, one Hux invited him to, and he tried so hard to not wipe his mouth off since the girl looked so confused. Seven Minutes in Heaven or twenty seconds of regret. _"That's -- yep. So. What are you going to do with your life?"_ he'd asked her.

"I made it awkward," he tells Rey, not bothering to look up from his calculus. "It was kinda gross? Uh." His ears are red, she notices. She also realizes he's not very articulate. "I don't think I knew her name?"

"Goodness."

He makes a face at her, pushes his hands through his dark hair. It's a little shorter and he's a little.. different. Something in him that strayed away from angsty band tees and skinny jeans and the real bad influences she's pretty sure almost had him in a cell because guilty by association, but now he's kinda dressed like his dad, rugged denim and a grease-stained white t-shirt and brown Converse. He's no longer too cool to be smart, except he was never really _cool_ to begin with. His grin is suddenly boyish and stupid. "I lied," he says, "I knew her name."

"Yeah?" She raises both her eyebrows at him, and if she were asking Poe about his first kiss, well, she'd have the direct hour and color of the girl's shoes and the hoodie he was wearing that day and addresses and names of witnesses and probably the girl's social security number.

And copious amounts of detail.

She wants to swoon.

She kinda wants to know what it's like, but Ben is back to being busy with his homework, all spread over the kitchen table when he won't even sit for meals.

"Her perfume smelled bad. Her greatest ambition was to win a beauty pageant."

"Oh, no," she laughs, like that's the worst thing in the world. She's long-since forgotten her own math, but he's long-suffering and can only tell her the first thirteen digits of pie about seven more times before he breaks. "Was she pretty?"

That makes him quirk his mouth, how curious (nosy) she is, summer sun on her shoulders and burned on his arms. "She kinda was?" He's looking at her strange, she realizes, like he's taking a hint. "Lots of make-up, I think. Kinda an airhead."

"Then why'd you kiss her," she huffs under her breath, the angry thud of her flip-flops sliding off her feet and hitting the floor. It's unjust all over again, her biased jealousy, but he glances up from his calculator to grin at her.

"Why not?" he teases. And reaching out, he chucks her under the chin, turns his focus back to math and doesn't say anything else for ten minutes.

He's so oblivious, so everything Taylor Swift sings about, so much _Ben_ that it's in her every thought and all she dreams about later.

\- -- - -- -

So by the time she's fifteen, Captain America is finally getting his own movie.

It's just that Chris Evans was the Human Torch in _Fantastic Four_ , so this is the worst casting idea since Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern, right?

(Wrong, but the world won't fall in love with Chris Evans until Steve Rogers says he's waiting for the right partner, but within the next four years? God, he'll be the poster boy of the Avengers and will totally beat Iron Man and his lack of morality, thank you, but we're not there yet.)

So for now Chris Evans is just a mistake.

"I don't know," Finn likes to say, 'cause he's the embodiment of Superman but sinfully loves Marvel just as much as DC and not a bit more, "I think Marvel is making a comeback."

"What do they have to come back from?"

"The Phoenix Saga," he deadpans.

But she thought the _X-Men_ movies were great, the original trilogy that's now actually kinda awful because now there's a James McAvoy making everything better. So. "Right," she nods, looking away with her trademark _you're strange_ look. It earns her a shove to the arm and she laughs, sun chairs and iced tea in his mama's front yard, May sunshine a pleasant breeze that doesn't stifle or melt.

"We should do something great this summer," he says next, soulful music from the sixties pouring out to them from the windows, and knowing him, he'll likely suggest they climb a mountain or something else empowering.

She knows he's set up for success, is part of nearly all the school's extracurriculars and has made honor roll every year. Two foreign languages (even though his Spanish isn't as sexy as Poe's, but hey, it's in Dameron's blood) and probably scholarships for several different things for several different things, academics or football or like, chess, she doesn't know, but she figures Finn will be great one day.

She could see it the first day they met, eight years old and his sheepish _you're the coolest girl I've met_ that spurred them in the last seven years of everything that's made them who they are.

And in all this sunlight, his eyes closed and so free from the stress that had him bound like a ball of yarn and unraveling insanity during finals, he's so quiet in his next words. "I don't think," he starts, sounding unsure because he's Finn and he's doubtful when he tries to gauge reactions, "that I want to join the military like my mom kinda wants." And for good measure, like a joke, he adds, "I don't think I'd be a good general," like it's not something that's been on his mind for months, likely.

And she remembers the first time she met Poe, how he stuck out his hand and told her that one day, he was going to be a pilot just like his mom and dad in the Air Force, but that certainty and confidence, that legacy.

That's not Finn.

"Okay," she tells him softly, leaning forward in the sun-hot chair. She won't press for details when he seems he doesn't want to give any, so she tries to keep her face encouraging and considerate, ears if he needs them. "Then don't, Finn."

"Yeah," he grimaces. It's the tone he uses when they decide to never mention something again, like the one time she got a 17 on a geometry test and then all the glass doors he's walked into. "I talked to Poe about it," but the tone he's using, that -- that makes her stop.

The way he looks, she wonders for just a moment, an imploding, unrequited moment, if Finn feels the same for Poe that she feels about Ben. But sometimes maybe soulmates just are or aren't platonic and can hold up galaxies in brown eyes and an old, patched up jacket. Dark curly hair and nonchalant smiles that mean so much, that look on Finn's face, just. God.

They could probably write some pretty angsty and heartbreaking poetry.

Or songs for Poe to play on his guitar.

"There's still time to figure it out," she reminds him, scratching an itch on her leg, what's probably a bug bite. "And!" A bit of a tease sneaks into her voice when she checks the time on her phone and a text from Ben she missed a few minutes ago, _you're not at home_ which means he knows because he is. "You could always grow up to be Captain America."

When he doesn't laugh, she looks up from the message she's typing to study Finn's face. He's unimpressed and smug simultaneously because he's told her eighty times how ridiculous she looks when she's texting Ben, and she tries to be discreet, she does, eighty times and three years of protesting how she obviously does not seriously have an actual crush on Ben.

"I could be Captain America," he argues instead of having her lie to him and herself again. If the movie tonight is good, she knows it'll be his Halloween costume in a few months. "You gonna bring him?"

"Not sure?" she wonders, checking for a new message.

_my dad is singing_

And Han is probably cooking them dinner, and it's like she can see the annoyed clench of Ben's jaw, the exasperated, emotionless way he'd tell her that this was why he'd left home except she knows him enough to figure he wouldn't mean it, that he's just twenty and moments like those are what he misses.

"I'm gonna ask," she tells Finn, an idea, grinning when a lightbulb flickers in his head, too.

"I'll ask Poe," Finn says, and then it's a large Coke and a Mountain Dew for the four of them to share and a large popcorn that gets passed down hand to hand until handfuls start getting tossed at each other.

Poe gets so caught up in Bucky's storyline that he's actually sadder than Rey is when he dies, and every time they go _hail Hydra!_ onscreen, Ben raises his fist in respect and people behind them whisper and Rey has to grab his hand to bring it down.

She and Finn exchange judgmental looks when people walk out before the after-credit scene, but he comes out of the movie kinda.. changed? Inherently good and everything symbolic of a true hero, but her ears are still ringing from all of Ben's commentary during the movie, but it's like the world's a collective sigh of relief and surprise all at once because Chris Evans is truly the bestest choice ever for Captain America, sweet Lord, she's in love.

But maybe that collective sigh the universe gives softly is just a chill in the wind, a steady sliver of glow from the moon encasing all the night and shining right on them.

She's walking with Ben since Poe's car brought them all to the theatre but was heading for McDonald's they didn't want like Poe and Finn did, and they're in silence aside from the crickets, the wind, the few cars that pass them by with beams of light that has her paranoia sticking her close to him.

"You've been doing okay?" she finally wonders aloud, catching what she thinks is his eyes when he turns his head to look.

"Yeah." His shoulders shake like his voice in a laugh she's too slow to catch. She knows he's fine 'cause they phone each other every so often, yet it'd been almost three weeks since she'd him in person.

Her eyes missed him almost as much as maybe her atoms missed just this close proximity to him, a silence that doesn't mean much except everything, a comfort in always having a fallback of familiarity and a number to call. He's so warm, walking next to her. She can feel it around the slight chill to the air; she shivers, a shudder creeping down her spine because their arms brush as they're walking.

As always, he's oblivious and still so warm, like the lamp-post up ahead, yet if he's the light, she's all the greedy moths bouncing off of it.

One side of his mouth is crooked into a smirk, and he's pocketing his hands casually, a picturesque stance that's scrutinizing and just a little disarming, maybe. "What's up with you?" he demands in a hushed tone, vicar and moonlight and something kinda accusing and accidental because she's not subtle.

She's really not at all.

She's a few steps away from him now, and more for self-preservation because she's an idiot, because his eyes are stars caught in the street-lamp, "Nothing," she says. "I'm fine." She smiles more convincingly since she is, more fine than she's been in days on this nightshade road. It's only been three weeks.

"Sure," he sneers.

 _"You're not buying me Skittles,"_ she had told him at the movies when he insisted. The girl behind the concessions counter didn't see her side of things at all, ignoring her _take it back_ with a dreamy sigh.

_"Just let your date buy you the candy. I wish mine would."_

_"Yeah,"_ Ben had smirked, handing the girl a five dollar bill, _"let your date buy you the candy."_

And because she's only fifteen and feels too much she can't articulate, she over-reacts in a fit of hormones and angry nonchalance to distract him from just how fragile and easily bruised her ego is. He's settled into silence, but she's just _angry_ all of a sudden.

She catches him off-guard when she stops to push hard at his shoulder with both her hands, so forceful a shove he has to take a step sideways for balance. His Converse scuffs on the pavement, stunned shoelaces skipping the steps he lets her storm ahead over, and it's like he's torn between pride and just fucking ignorant confusion.

All her eyes catch are his staring at her when she scowls over her shoulder; he's so quiet he's like tomorrow. "Where've you even been?" she grits out way too accusing. Hurt and so, _so_ stupid, she's really just an idiot of a girl that still only wants him to grow down, to wait.

"I knew you were mad," like she has double motives or something.

It's not her that slams front doors, though, not unless she's running late or is going out for French fries or ice cream, and it's not her that left everything in a cute little house with parents that try and keep running on love since it's all they used to have and holds up pretty good. She's not the one that leaves morose sighs in pitch black curtains either, frustrated curses in creaking stair steps, apologies in doormats and a heel-sized hole in the drywall the one time he proved to no one he could do a headstand.

So many memories. She almost doesn't wait for him to catch up before crossing the street.

"I kinda don't like you," she informs him.

He doesn't say anything for half a block, just hovers his hand over her back protectively when stray people or cars pass them.

"You're kinda awful, too," he shrugs. She knows the sound of his silent smile, though, and oh, she really kinda doesn't like him at all, doesn't let her heart skip when he walks her all the way up to her door and exchanges nice small talk with her mom and then says he'll still be around tomorrow.

\- -- - -- -

She hates Ben.

She does.

She's sixteen, and she's in the car with a boy one grade ahead that sounds like he's going places, like he's never had a doubt about where he fits in the world.

Principal's List and debate club and dual credits already for college courses, physics and calculus and extracurriculars guaranteeing him already probably a place in the Ivy League school he wants, Harvard and pre-law and a partner by the time he's twenty-seven.

He's figured it all out at just seventeen, and whatever aftershave he has on smells like heaven from the driver's seat. It's his dad's spotless car, and God, he showed her dad proof of his flawless driving record and proof of car insurance and all that -- he's told her of his application process for this summer internship in D.C. for something she's never even heard of, but he's impressive and smart and his eyes are green and his name is Brentley and she's way out of her depth.

They met two weeks ago into the school year in the library, and he's nice, he really is. He's kinda perfect, actually.

He seems like he already has the names of his future children picked out; he probably wants four in four, will have, like, the mayor come to his wedding. His mom probably wears pearls. His dad probably takes them vacationing in vineyards every other holiday.

She doesn't know how she's never seen him at school before a couple weeks ago, but she thinks he's on the swim team which probably means there's a yearbook photo somewhere with his abs in it.

He has dimples when he smiles.

He doesn't drive with the radio on, though, and he politely asked her to not when reflex needed to have her turning it on because silence was disquieting after a mile to some restaurant that's probably Italian and out of her budget if she's going to be independent and pay half.

In all honesty, he's actually really cute. He seems.. secure, like the roots in this small town go way deep and he's a legacy and branching up to greener pastures and a white picket fence and four sports cars in the underground garage.

In all honesty, dinner goes actually really well. He's funny, and he's likely drinking sweet tea ironically, but he's nice to the waiter and has impeccable manners and looks like he gives a damn when she's talking.

As far as first dates go, tonight was perfect, and he kisses her unimposingly on the cheek and says that this was really nice, that he'd like to see her again.

Her mom's waiting up when she's done being giddy enough to walk through the front door, three minutes until eight because he's obviously going to be a gentlemen one day, and she has this look like something important is happening, like the future is just so close since she's sixteen and her stomach is full of butterflies and she's trying so hard to not get too attached, she really is, it's just that tonight was wonderful, a fairytale and maybe a future because she's a naïve dreamer and a teenage girl, so they squeal together and her mom's twirling her in a happy dance, one that makes her dad startle and old-man disco bop and lock into the living room to join in the crinkling giggles.

"I liked that kid," her dad says, throwing up dancing peace signs over his eyes like a halo, the angel he thinks of that boy that shook his hand and promised his daughter'd be home by eight-thirty.

He knew she woke early for track. It's too early to guarantee, but he'd offered to come to the first meet of this new season.

"I think she does, too," her mom preens, a subtle voice not subtle at all when she's been married for almost twenty years and her husband chuckles at the tone. "Look at her face!"

And it's red, she can feel it under the laughter, the embarrassment that's a little like hope, the.. the emotion. That's wondering why she's thinking of Ben.

And wondering if this is how it happens.

Finn thinks he's great, Brentley, but no matter how many times she insists that it was just a first date, it's like it's all going way fast. Too quick for her to catch up.

Not the guy, but life.

He asked her where she was going in life and what she wanted to be, but Christ Almighty, he started to ask her about college and schools and things so natural and orderly she shouldn't even have blinked. There are people with it all planned, Poe drilling maneuvers and flying as high as heaven, Brentley with probably the ambition of running for governor, her mom who only ever really wanted to be a mother, but then there's Finn in a lawn chair and taking all his eggs out of the only basket he had, Ben's hands palm up and reaching for a future with flexed fists and running shoes, and there's her, and she doesn't know, and she --

She's still so new to being sixteen and figuring out that being asked _so what do you want to be when you grow up?_ requires a real answer. Trying to sort head over heart and protein counts is exhausting, but she doesn't even have a clue. How's she supposed to get an idea?

There's also the, uh.

Her parents, or -- not her parents even though she hates herself for thinking that when she shouldn't care about semantics considering they gave her more than just walls and a roof and food, they gave her early morning smiles when she's testy and tired and homicidal, and they give her lectures when she needs them and peanut butter always in the cabinet. A home that's not a house but these two people who saw her and decided maybe they'd all be a family together, except not after she turned sixteen so they could ask her calmly if she wanted them to do all they could to find out who her birth parents were.

They didn't know if she wanted to know.

They understand that she might have questions or feel different emotions surrounding that, ones that are angry or hurt or bitter or empty, and that was okay. They wouldn't be hurt.

They were just wondering.

And she did tell them no; of course she did, she didn't want to know. She didn't need to know.

Except it's days turned months of decisions and choices and a probably really committed relationship so far as high school sweethearts go, like all the pictures from Leia's old photo album, and it's an actual family that still fills the voids left in a little girl's heart, and it's a future she.. doesn't know.

It's been weeks. It's kinda eating her up.

Thoughtless, she pulls up Ben's contact, considers briefly calling him and saying it all, that she's in her own head and losing her mind.

Her hand is gripping her phone tight to her ear, a flicker of regret almost ending the call in lieu of the hope he won't pick up and the want of him to be here.

When he answers on the second ring, though, it's.. of course he does. Her heart's so full she could cry.

 _"Rey,"_ he says. His sigh's so groggy, deep with sleep, and yes, this is a phone call, but it's like he's whispering in her ear and snug somewhere next to her where the world can slow down. _"You're the only one allowed to call me at three in the morning."_

"I'm sorry," is all she can say before she nearly loses it, a choke that she smothers with her pillow.

And she tells him about her parents. He doesn't interrupt her, just lets her talk, a void that's hers with just his breaths on the other end of the line. He listens when she tells him she gets it, wanting time to stop like he used to feel when she hadn't caught up yet but his future hadn't either, how he was lost and aimless and young and she gets it.

She really does, for the tear-stained cheeks and how she's failing chemistry. How she doesn't know anything about Jefferson's economic plan. How when he used to explain math to her, she wasn't really paying attention, and her voice cracks because she's breaking down and doesn't have a plan or a hope or a goal beyond passing her science class, how this guy has it all figured when she can't even work out how to make French toast.

And he laughs, but it's real gentle.

He gets it, and he doesn't have to tell her about all his high school panic attacks when the future got way too close way too soon 'cause she was there with him. And he's sorry he's not home, he's just still with his uncle somewhere in the mountains where the humidity was supposed to be good for the body and the mind. Good for a get-away, and he tells her adulthood is pretty much that when she gets to it. The same music and even more responsibilities and decisions, and everything is the same, yeah, just different. And good.

He tells her to hold on.

He tells her she's _so bright, sunshine_ , because it's so late (early) and they're delirious and she's laughing.

_"Just take a breath, sweetheart, just wait."_

Her stomach still feels heavy after, tied up in the knots that rivet her tongue lame after sharing too much and baring almost everything.

It's almost five when she hangs up, holds on to how he made her laugh the last half hour when all she wanted to do was cry. He convinced her into taking a visit with a school counselor about her future, and she..

She just. Holds so tight. She can breathe now. Calm and being comforted curl her into a ball in her bed, snug and thinking of him and how lucky they've been to have each other when the rest of the world got way mad.

He's a dream she's held on to for too long, though.

\- -- - -- -

He's angry footfalls down the crowded sidewalk, an angry car honking its horn in the distance, people passing too abrasive for eye contact, too full of themselves to care for these strangers they barely shy away from plowing into.

Pretentiously, he feels it all deep in his bones, way into his heart where he absolutely can not, will not stop to any of his dad's muted yells of his name. He keeps walking a storm of angry shopping bags clutched tight in his fists, mechanical odds and ends and a new sink he _really_ doesn't need help installing, thanks. He's got it.

"Ben!"

And like the heavens open up, everything clears, people on the street part ways for the angry-faced middle aging man stomping after his son.

"What do you think you're doing!"

Walking away from him, really. "I'm going home, Han."

"You --" and oh, Ben can just see the face his dad is making, the squint of his eyebrows, the indignant confusion. "I have a set of your keys!"

 _That_ makes him whirl around and stop, a pace away from Han looking so surprised that got his attention. There's a red light next to them, the crosswalk just a foot away and he's _so_ close to it. He can just go --

But he doesn't.

"You weren't gonna stop to say hi since you didn't call?"

"I don't have to call, Dad."

"Your mom was worried," he frowns, squinting his eyes at the sun just up ahead.

"Yeah, but Uncle Luke called," he protests, and it sounds so pathetic to his ears, but ah, well, reasons are reasons, and now he's starting to feel bad.

"You know we would have liked to hear from you."

"Yeah," he winces, cold air from all the cars breezing past hitting his face.

There's a terse moment before Han sighs. "How's the crazy old man anyways?"

"Luke's not old," not yet, but either way he arches his brows 'cause his dad's a little too pot and kettle and starting to grey. "He's great."

"And you?" he asks him, taking another pause because Leia would want him to ask just to make sure. "You wanna come over for dinner?"

"Han." He obviously doesn't, barely misses his dad's insulted look when he turns around to go home.

"Ben! Don't walk away from me again," he warns, right next to him since the light's green and they've a few good years to revisit.

"I don't wanna do this now, alright? I don't want to have this talk."

"What talk? Ben." He's so exasperated, not too sure how to try when his twenty-one year old kid's being unnecessary. "You just want to fight, son? Is that what you want?" And Ben would laugh if this wasn't all so dire, his dad rounding up like he's ready to swing and _can_ knock his son on his ass, but the light changes to red, and before he can do anything, Han's shaking his head. "Just hold my hand," he says, clasping their fingers together and starting to cross the street.

"I'm not a kid," Ben mutters petulantly, indignant and outraged at being half-dragged like a four year old and trying to tug his hand free.

"Aren't you?" Han scoffs, and they're both seventeen years younger suddenly, bright headlights and busy streets and two scowls that turn into laughs.

\- -- - -- -

So first, he presses his lips distractingly to her cheek, just under her eyebrow, under her ear. He's been watching her study for the last hour, and like a light on fire, her wrist blazes where his fingers graze her skin. It’s a little hard to breathe like she's suffocating daily and has been all these months she's been seventeen and been with him, kinda, it hurts to watch him, he's so bright, too beautiful for her eyes, but it’s harder still to look away from him, and she's going blind here on the living room floor.

"You make my days better," he tells her, all hers for the weekend.

And it isn't like it's really a lot of commitment, just the comfort of a realization colored like shock onto his face. Like the _you're my best friend_ that became much, much more.

And second, her heart beats faster when he leans into her, letting his breath tease her lips until they part on a ragged sigh. It's been months, several of them, and she's eighteen while tomorrow he's twenty-three, a snowy road and a sidewalk and her hat pulled tight over her ears, snowflakes stuck to his eyelash and wet on her cheeks.

For once his kiss isn't sweet and chaste; it's raw and passionate and unafraid, everything in him burning except she lost the feeling in her hands and her feet and her nose one block ago.

His tongue on hers is heady and familiar by now, and she struggles to keep up, eagerly tangling herself in him. But she's a little out of her depth, a lot frozen, her breaths coming out in short clouds of hot air when she pulls back and _grins_.

"Stop that," he says, leaning up from where he had to crane his neck to kiss her. He's so red.

"I can't," she laughs, walking right into his arms.

There's nothing left of his that isn't hers, her static-crazed hair sticking up to his lips, tickling his nose. They're holding each other here on a sidewalk, and if he doesn't say he loves her now, then maybe it won't cut her up.

Third, he's drinking coffee with his mom at a little café they always used to go to, the one with the chocolate chip muffin tops she'd bring him schooldays he was sick or days he was unnecessarily angsty and she always knew what to say.

The sun is shining and he is, too, each month that goes one that changes the seasons and gives him a reason to as well. His mom's noticed, of course she has, she always has, but it's a second-guessed shake of his head, a scrunch of his eyes that can't meet hers.

It's the lightest conversation they've had in a long while, but when she asks him why he's looking so serious, he doesn't tell her.

When he'd said he was too old for Rey because he was rather severe and self-deprecating, it was fucking Finn of all people that told him if he didn't pull himself together, she'd spend thirteen months trying to forget him before falling in love with a fucking French student, probably, named Pierre with weird hats and a quick wit and a killer fashion sense with abs. Christ.

So he smiles at his mom and makes the mistake of asking her about her work. It's a long two hours and three chocolate chip muffin tops.

And four, the hopeless that used to be her heart sings for him, pulses in her veins, echoes in her ears and wavers in her voice. There's none of the protective bravado that used to mask how vulnerable she was, just something now more surefire and sweet and scathing.

Sometimes she nearly says things like she doesn't know what she'd do without him, and he almost tells her things like how she's changing his life, but it's all so much right now, so good it's like a dream, the radio between them, one of his hands on the steering wheel, the other curled tight around hers.

He could say it, how he watched her turn nine, how he'll see her turn nineteen in just a couple months. He could turn to her and say it, _I've loved you the entire time_ , but something's tied in his ribs, and his sunglasses are drooping down the bridge of her nose, and instead of anything they might profess in the sanctuary of each other and the blue sky and the _Falcon_ , he answers, "Chinese."

She's asked him where he wants to eat.

Fifth, it's been a while of this, of a life that could be like a future, maybe. They're waiting on Poe to come back to his gran's house with his borrowed truck for the couch he's taking back to his own place off-base. Due to traffic and a last minute food run, they're stuck guarding the old green couch in the driveway while he's somewhere twenty-odd minutes away, her feet secure in his lap, charcoal grey painted toes occasionally kicking his face 'cause she's mean when he's an impatient idiot.

But his arm's thrown over his eyes, and the love-seat of a couch is too squishy for his taste, but she's happy even though a stupid argument proved they'll have a hell of a time rearranging furniture peacefully the rest of their lives.

And it's.. it probably won't be as easy as it's been, knowing him. One or both of them might just wanna give up one day, it'd be awful, though, because he thinks he feels something long-lasting. It's like driving in winter with all the windows down, calling her at dawn because he can't wait to hear her voice.

It's that.

\- -- - -- -

The second time ever they have sex, his AC is broken, and this might have been the worst ever decision they've ever even ever made.

Her underboob sweat is, like, ridiculous, and his hair is a mess from all the box fans plugged into circuits all around the room.

As good as kissing him is, it's kinda miserable, the laughs he's breathing hot into her neck are miserable and melting her in ways that aren't sexy at all, but damn when he starts to kiss over her chin, down to her breasts.

"We can try ice," he suggests raggedly.

The sensation of his beard, though, his stubble rough against the buds of her nipples before he soothes over her with his tongue and bites her gently with his teeth, she's not warm and pliant and melding into him like days ago. She's on fire so quick she can barely stand it seeping into every part of her.

"You're so sensitive," he marvels awe-struck and slack-jawed, but his groan fills the entire room except _her_ when she fists her hands in his hair and tugs. Her ankles cross over his lower back to urge him closer, a sheen of sweat slipping everything up with slick motions a little too difficult since they're still getting the hang of this, still working out the specifics of how they make this good together.

He rubs his knuckle over her clit like he's gotten so good at, _so_ much practice he knows just how to make her whine and spasm and moan around his fingers while he tells her how good she feels, how good she sounds.

"Ben," she gasps. She rocks her hips for more friction, urgently drawing him to her for _now_ , "Please," she cries, digging her nails into his sweaty back, spreading her thighs wider for him in unencumbered instinct. She can feel him hard against her thigh before his head nudges at her, and he kisses her consent, tastes her _oh_ as she whispers it.

The stretch is less sharp than the first time; he's cautious and almost trembling in the effort of holding still above her instead of every instinct to thrust again, to bury himself deep in her when she needs the time to adjust.

"Does it hurt?" he asks her hoarsely. Every breath she draws in, every press of her chest to his he feels, but fuck, she's clenching at him so tight and so hot.

"No," she whispers, "but do something. _Move_ ," 'cause she might die, she is, the fullness of him when she lets herself ease and relax, his tender kisses to her brow, her jaw, the freckles on the bridge of her nose.

He moves. When he slides out, she hisses, pushing up to meet him and trying to copy the movements. He thrusts back into her and she pulls back, the frustration something intangible because they should be so close but she's missing him because she can't catch the rhythm or -- "Ben," she huffs, her face scrunching up in a wince. "I -- I can't," it's supposed to be good, better than anything, but this, this is awful, she is, oh, God, she feels that edge so far away and _can't_. She could cry.

"Hey," he soothes. The way he's looking at her makes her heart seize. "This is good," he assures her, even with their limbs trying to figure it out, the fan starting to chill the room, finally. "Rey," he smiles, bowing his head to lick the salt off her neck, "move."

He bends both her knees, and she can feel it at her spine and the slightest change in an angle that darkens her eyes. It's almost insufferable, so much heat, but she thrusts herself up to take all of him in one quick motion, gasping as he groans to the wet slap of their skin.

He could come by just the way she says _fuck_ and moans his name when she pulls back and then takes him in her heat again, her back an arch and her fingers chasing the ladder of his ribs. She holds him as he starts to move with her, following the pace she's set.

She pushes, and he meets her until her thighs start to tremble, and just like that they've got a rhythm, a clash of their sexes so sweet, he -- she looks lost between a good kinda pain and like, the agony of bliss, the face she's making with her eyes scrunched up and her teeth bared. And he's impressed for a second, lets it get right to both heads 'cause she hasn't looked so euphoric all the times he's made her cum.

"Is it that good?" he smirks, sticky kisses following her chin, cocksure and dazed and so blinded by her.

"No," she chokes, a snorted huff of laughter. And she _clenches_ , and he swears to God, he whites out for a second. "My leg has a cramp," she tells him, and she makes that face again, laughing and kissing him and pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes and taking a breath so deep it mashes her tits to his chest. "Help," she whines with another ridiculous snort.

It clutches right at his heart, and he's tempted to tell her all her running didn't do any good (but neither did his), but she's grinning like an idiot, his beautiful, perfect idiot, hooking her ankles back around him and digging her heels into his ass.

"C'mon," she glints, slipping her hand between them to feel where they meet, how he's slipping in and out of her with the way she moves.

It's like she goes convex, surges her everything up to him and soldering them together.

In a surprising turn of events, it's actually better than the first time.

\- -- - -- -

So a few months later, well into nineteen, he's not yet twenty-four and won't be for a while.

They get a call, though.

Or well, she does.

He just watches her peel herself off him and the couch, hurrying so quick for her phone that her fluffy socks skid on the floor and he presses his knuckles to his mouth so she won't hear him laugh after she hits a wall.

And he watches her excitement captivate all her body, her frantic gesture for him to pause _Braveheart_. He sees her excitedly mouth that it's Poe, but then he watches the color drain from her face, the way her hazel eyes go bloodshot.

Finn's sedated when they get to the hospital, flat on his stomach with a brace on his back. It goes straight up to his neck like he's paralyzed, and oh, no, God, the horror and the heartbreak shocked on their faces makes Poe laugh.

"He's alright!" he's quick to say, too slow for the phone call half an hour ago, apparently. "Back sprain and he bruised his coccyx. His mom made him wiggle all his toes and he's perfect."

And well, they crash in waiting room chairs while taking turns sitting in with Finn's mother, everything analyzed about the football practice accident to help determine what precisely happened. Poe's only so calm because it was him that had walked in by himself to see his buddy looking lethargic on the hospital bed, so it's calm now, except Rey really doesn't want to leave to gather provisions because knowing Finn, it's likely he'll come-to the second she's out of hearing range.

"He's gonna be fine," Ben tells her, steady eyes and steady hands taking them back home.

Yes, Finn was so lucky, all he'll need is a pillow, sure, it's not like it's _serious at all_ , he could have died.

"He could not have," he scoffs, a dark laugh making her roll her eyes.

"But it could have been really bad, Ben," she sighs.

"Exactly." He lets her pry his right hand off the steering wheel so she can play with his fingers and keep them close. "It could have been a knee injury. Then what would he have done?"

She smacks at him. He lifts her hand to his mouth, drags his lips over her palm without taking his eyes off the road. "Ben."

"He'll be fine," and even though he can't promise, he does, but let's face it, the time Poe tried to teach Finn to swim and accordingly had to give him CPR, well. Drowning's worse. "He's tough."

"I know," she winces, melodramatically sighing to the window. "We've gotta bring him Monopoly."

"We will."

"And movies. I don't know how long they're gonna make him stay."

He doesn't answer, just listens to her quiet sighs. Her frustrated huffs. The hungry growl of her stomach.

"Sweetheart," he calls her. He catches her eye quickly, her cute simper of a frown. "Baby, what do you want to eat?"

He's never called her that before, though, _baby_ , and it tinges her cheeks pink. "..Chicken nuggets?" Her nose scrunches apologetically -- the stomach wants what the stomach wants, still.

"You're after my heart," he preens, rolling his broad shoulders, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

But she knows that crooked grin of his, and nope. Nope. "You're gonna get me a happy meal again, aren't you."

"How offended do you think Finn's mom would be if we brought her one?"

"Oh, my God. She'd be madder if we didn't bring one for Poe."

So they do after gathering the customary necessities, socks, one of his hoodies, comfortable pillows and blankets. Monopoly and the Game of Life especially because Finn's the only one that likes to play it. They've got several different DVDs just in case, choices are better than nothing else, so they're well-stocked and _he's_ the one that's kept her mom in the loop, and that -- goodness.

They hold hands the way back to the hospital. The sky's starting to get darker, but that's not why he refused to let her drive, she's just so tense, keeps asking him if Finn's gonna be fine.

And he will be, he really, really will.

It's just that he's still asleep when they get back to the hospital room, and that's not good at all.

\- -- - -- -

So she's twenty, is working at unpacking a way heavy cardboard box of books she's brought.

It's winter, the heaviest things seem to happen in winter, loaded questions, aggravation. Frustration had her taking off the old grey hoodie of his with the torn neck because she was mad, but he's not mad, he's angry. And it charges everything.

If she didn't know better, she'd think it was just a mood, him waking up on the miserable side of their bed to a clock he insisted was to trying to screw him over. Everything just escalated, though. He kept snapping at her with grating, snide remarks.

"If this is going to work," she'd told him, maybe right after throwing her brush at his stupid head, "you're going to have to calm down."

"Me?" he gapes, indignant and hypocritical and fuming more confused than anything. "I'm not the one throwing things."

"You're shouting at me!"

"I'm --" That makes him pause, makes him go back to the start of today and every second since. "I'm not," and she knows he's using the inflection he does when he's trying to not let anger and aggravation harshen his tone. "Rey, sweetheart, you've got to talk to me. You're not telling me shit."

"Why would I?"

The words are out before she can snatch them back, but the frustrated look he's got isn't as bad as what it could be if she'd said the unforgiving things she considered for a blink.

She can't, just watches the line of his mouth set. It's like she's seeing him try to consider if she's lying or not, when they got the incentive to be so rude to each other.

But it's not him that's angry and wild and clenched fists, it's her. Yesterday, too, when he was nothing but patience and trying to understand. He was doing everything perfectly, yet her irrational anger kept her finding faults in everything he was doing.

"Just tell me what's the matter," he pleads, coming to stand behind her. "I can.. I can drive you home," if she's that miserable here, her home, but it's a swallow of guilt and how torn up he sounds. He reaches out to gently grasp her forearms.

So she takes a breath so it'll stop eating away at her, reality sinking in that she'll have to 'fess up at some point anyways, that this -- this might be it. For real. It's a precipice, a wide chasm, and "I threw up this morning," she blurts, so tactless she cringes at herself. She turns in his arms to look at his realization and figure out what this might mean, but his concern for her is so sweet, he's such an idiot.

"You did? You want me to take you to the doctor?" Tenderly, like he can tell it, he presses the back of his hand to her forehead. Then he shrugs, stoops a little to set a kiss there instead. "That why you've been cross with me?"

"Ben," she insists, willing him back to her, to focus, "you know I never get sick."

The confusion hits him first.

Then she sees a flicker of doubt, the trademark of skepticism that makes him frown.

Then he looks like he might laugh before the faintest edge of panic laces into his smile and pales him a little.

But then he's just Ben, straightening empathetically to reason first, a clear head but he's curling his arms around her protectively. When he says it, "You're pregnant," he sounds like he's going into cardiac arrest.

"I'm not sure," she exhales, willing her heart to even out.

Like he can feel it, he sets his palm over her chest and pulls her closer with his other hand, just a sliver between them, and God, she can tell he's jumpy, anxiety starting to riddle his shoulders to nervous shakes. "Okay, okay, uh.. but you can't be pregnant," he realizes, but he says it so logically, oh,

"My God, Ben." She can't help but snort. "It doesn't work that way."

"Don't patronize me," he mutters, flippant, scrunching his eyes closed in thought. "You're on the pill, though."

She blinks. "You know that doesn't always work --"

"-- Which is why we use condoms." Running his hand through his hair, he huffs like he's kinda annoyed.

That really shouldn't be his reaction to a baby, though, so for a mean moment, she's not too unforgiving to herself for being so rude to him all day. "Ben."

"We always use condoms, Rey."

"Except," she starts, waiting for him to work out what she already had hours ago. "When we don't?"

"When?" he asks dumbly. He makes a face at her when she narrows her eyes accusingly at him, huffs a little to.. oh, no. Oh, no. "Poe's wedding was a little over a month ago," he remembers. Well, he remembers how she looked in the dress, how she spread her legs and how he held her up. They don't do enough of that.

"Stop that," she accuses, seeing straight through that look on his face.

"We'll get a test." He has the humility to look apologetic, kinda worried, but if he's kinda, she's running out of her mind. "We'll figure it out, sweetheart." He kisses her forehead again.

"Just.. can you put your arms around me?" she mumbles, exhausted and worried and feeling awful, collapsing herself in on him to bury her face in his button down. She's sighing and has a mouthful of his collar when he shifts them, his arm secure and warm against her lower back while he bends a bit to get his free arm under her knees.

He carries her like a bride or a dead body to the couch, ignoring the chokehold she has on his neck to just. Hold her close. He doesn't let her go, breathing assurances into her hair and trailing his fingers over her spine soothingly.

Eventually, they have to have fallen asleep because they wake up. He does, to her hair in his mouth and her drool on his shirt, but his clothes are.. wet. And everything's sticky.

"Rey," he says gently to rouse her up. Then more urgently, 'cause she feels clammy and is sweating so much. Christ. "Rey," he tries again, but she curls herself more onto him and makes the cutest little noise of a sleepy, grumpy _no_.

They're not having a baby, she's just sick.

For a stupid moment, he thinks he might be disappointed.

His dad answers his mom's phone when he calls to ask about medicine since he doesn't trust Google, and he brings him everything she might need. He also brings them a box of pregnancy tests, insisting it's still better to make sure, to be careful, that'd it'd be far better him knowing about it than Leia currently, because sometime after the _oh, you're not Mom_ but before the pause and the _I love you, bye_ , he told his dad everything. Really wanted to.

\- -- - -- -

She's so close to twenty-two and finally being a Taylor Swift song.

He's halfway down the bed, pressing gentle kisses to her thighs to bring her down from her high, except he really underestimates how calm she can be with his stubble tickling her and his tongue doing _that_.

Bruce Springsteen comes on the radio next, and it's really all an orgasmic haze of euphoria with his mouth, hers. How they render and evict so much more from each other in the heart, how _good_.

"I've got you," he whispers, reveling in each breaths that shivers out of her, a warm feeling in his chest like free-falling or dropping into the sun, drowning in all this affection riveted off of her. She's grinding against his hand, fluttering and clenching. He curls his fingers deep inside her, splays his other hand over her abdomen and presses so she can feel the heel of his palm when she rocks up.

So much of her skin is warm everywhere, and she's already come twice this morning, can't form any coherent words. Just breathy sighs that tell him how good she feels, high-keening moans that leave him breathless.

He kisses up her jaw, sucks on a spot below her ear. "C'mon, sweetheart, I wanna feel you," he murmurs. Sliding his fingers in and out of her, chasing the rhythm she's started with her hips, he drags his thumb to her clit.

It makes her fingers go shaky in his hair, but she tugs greedily before she unfurls and clenches. He can see the change in her eyes, the hazel so bright with her grin flushing down her cheeks. It's so intimate, the eye contact, almost _too much_ , but he burns this image of her into his mind. If he can't remember anything else 'till he's grizzled and grey, he wants to know the slant of her mouth rounded to every moan that reverberates from her core, the wet slick of his fingers pumping in and out of her to the knuckle. The stretch of her heat pulsing around him -- how she shakes. The way her thighs tremble.

She's silent when she comes, quiet short of the quick hitches of her breath that spread from her heart out, and she's _beautiful_ , the last little sensitive clench of her around his spreading fingertips so sweet. She whines when he pulls them out of her, electric and radiant, she really is, she giggles a breathless lull when he whispers that she did so good, that she's perfect even though his sentiments make no sense.

He's pliant when she throws her leg over the backs of his thighs and presses his shoulders over so he's on his back. She climbs ontop of him lazily, dotting tongue-wet kisses over his abdomen, up his chest.

He smiles his adoration for her, curls his hands through her hair to make her sigh. She stretches on him like a cat, rubs herself a little too purposefully over his abdomen when she drags herself up, knees on either of his sides.

"Want me to clean you up?" he asks, his voice coming out rough and low.

She preens down at him, letting her hands cover every part of his skin she can reach. "Maybe later," she wonders, and his smirk's already been bitten into her neck, the skin at her thighs is roughed red from his stubble, still wet from her release and soaking him, too.

"Anything you want, Rey," he swears, tucking her hair behind her ear.

She beams down at him, smiling like sugar, splaying her hands over his biceps. She palms and traces his chest to feel just how his heart's beating for her, and time is like the slow stretch of honey pulled from a jar, wherever their bodies touch, it's like their flesh comes alive. Light stains their drawn shades yellow, and _this_ is her favorite way to wake up.

She presses both her hands to his face, grinning so big when his long fingers catch her left hand by the wrist. His lips tickle over the knuckle of her third finger, a playful nip of his teeth smirking up at her before she squeals and has to cover her face, the pink that's staining her skin everywhere. He kisses just below the engagement ring, and in turn, her eyes soften when she trails her fingertips over the scar cutting into his face.

The breath that catches in his chest sticks with his heart to the roof of his mouth, and he's frozen for a moment, powerless to the gentle way she's touching him, the sheer love that's crinkling the corners of her eyes and taking hold of him.

"Rey," he exhales, suddenly breathless like he's drowning under her touch. The pillows all smell like her, and his tongue still tastes like her, and she's written all over him, God, he can't remember anything before her, wants there to be nothing but her for the rest of his life. "Rey."

"I love you," she replies quickly, a lazy, arrogant quirk of her lips guessing what he was going to say. She kinda free falls, shifts and squirms so she's fully laying ontop of him with an idle kiss of their limbs, shrieks when his fingers find the ticklish notches of her ribs.

He snorts at her, keeping her still with a hand just over her lower back. "That's not what I was gonna say."

But she's so happy she could burst, so sated she's almost limbless. "Tell me anyways," she hums, pressing her nose into his neck and nuzzling. She could devour him, she loves him so much, this routine and this comfort and the habit of this.

She thinks of everything she had but didn't, a backdrop or just a precursor, all the things she never had the courage to say to him when every fiber in her begged to. But here it all is, and God, somedays she might call the freckled moles on his face constellations, the curves of his ribs waning gibbous moons, his being an entire _galaxy_ she always thought the world of.

But she made the runaway fighter in him tired, and it's either the best or worst idea he's ever had, something they've joked about the past couple weeks, but he just. He says it, free as air, as easy as holding her hand. "I want to marry you, Rey," because he was done in years ago. He doesn't want to wait anymore when there's a life out there that's awkward, beautiful babies, a wraparound porch, waking up to her but having her his, purple and yellow handprints stuck on the front door.

Her laugh is hushed, a quiet flutter that he can feel in his own chest, buried deep in that spot that was only ever hers. "Ben, we're already engaged," she murmurs thoughtfully. When her hair brushes over his sternum and she presses a little too hard with her elbow, she finds his brown eyes intent on her.

And God, she's never seen him look so serious in his life, not even when he decorates Christmas trees.

"Right now, I mean." His Adam's apple rolls when he clears his throat, then he sighs so deep, it pulls her up on his chest, slides skin against skin. "Today. I want to be married to you."

When she's too shockstill to speak, he gathers her up by siding up her knees, pushing both of them up after so they're sitting. It's tender, though, even straddling and naked, eye level and close and tight and _here_. "I get if you want the big wedding," he tells her, heartbreakingly serious, "and we can still do that if you want, but I'm ready for us to be married. I want to be your husband. We need to get old and fat and have lots of babies, Rey, and I don't want to wait for it anymore." He wants all of it, the morning breath, the decisions as a married couple that are gonna last seventy-five years. The three boxes of macaroni and cheese they'll share between the two of them. He wants to tell her all of it, but he doesn't have the words to pretty up how the way she looks at him makes him feel.

"You really want to elope," she whispers, fisting her hand into the hair at the back of his neck.

Without missing a beat, he shakes his head. "I want what you want."

"I want.. stop," she gasps, a squirming, wispy laugh that doesn't say _stop_ , tells him to keep smoothing his hands up her sides, stroking the underside of her breasts with his thumbs. She fidgets, presses her forehead to his shoulder. "I really like this song," she admits, and she's not stalling, she's not, but the white noise of the radio around them hasn't been paid attention to for an hour.

He stops for a second, long enough to make out the slow croon of the golden oldies. When he makes a noise of disgust, she bites his shoulder. "You can't seriously like the Righteous Brothers," he accuses, not unlovingly.

And then she.. she could live the rest of her life like this. She really could. Wrapped up in him and just existing. Being with him's as simple as drawing a breath, and they've had this for years, a moment between them, their futures hanging overhead like old umbrellas waiting to be used.

And like rain or famine or.. God, she doesn't know, just loves him so _fucking_ much, it's all these little pieces of her pouring out of her soul and tumbling into his hands, so much skin and so much heart, it's.. shuddering through her. Everything they're gonna do. Everything they're gonna be. "Yes," she tells him, drawing out a breath that feels like it's so liberating, "yes," and he kisses her heart out of her jaw, shuts his eyes and exhales like she's the most precious thing, like this is all he's ever wanted.

"Like, _yes_?" he murmurs, feeling the rush under her skin where he touches, "Or sex yes?"

"What's someone wear to elope?" she answers instead, and God, her grin fits perfectly against his, so right, she wants to tell him all of it, but she doesn't have the words for how the way he's looking at her makes her feel.

\- -- - -- -

It's three months later they're driving, a night he'd had to stay late at work to finish a project he was in charge of, canceled dinner reservations and her asleep in one of his shirts when he finally made it home.

And it's been four years since he kinda let go, since fear and hesitation went away to something sweeter and softer, something he still can't really put to words.

She's the sleepy type of alert, almost three in the morning and a cup of coffee in her hands. His right hand's resting over her thigh, a comfort just to touch her like the weight of a promise, and he's actually smiling at the empty roads, at her when she's gazing at him hard enough to make him look back.

There's love in all this silence, Bruno Mars a quiet hum filling in the blanks for them. Every so often he tells her to look up, all the stars she loves so much so _alive_ in the sky, but the green lights of this old, wonderful rust-bucket car shine on the chain around his neck, a wedding band she sees him holding tightly sometimes.

Clocks center and round the days until he can wear it again, a day's decision to make it something official kept quiet for the first few days to make it just theirs with all its goodness, but all the effort gone into planning a ceremony, how happy her dad'll be to walk his daughter down the aisle, how his dad's gonna cry -- they can wait to share their news until their twentieth anniversary scheduled seven months and three days before the actual planned ceremony date.

And the moments like these, they'll just be theirs, driving aimlessly. Having it all.

It's in the silence. It's in the way his chest seizes when he kisses her before going to work. It's the three fucking boxes of macaroni they demolish just the two of them, it's how she makes him laugh like he's always surprised anything can be that hilarious, the snide jokes he makes, the way she always burns toast.

Just a step, fights and small talk and how sometimes he still says it like he's surprised, like she's the only thing grounding him to the present, "You're my best friend," with her picture in his office and how she sees him even with all the lights out, her eyes closed.

They're so in love. It's always been there. Sure as anything.


	3. three

She can hear him walking nonchalantly around, keeps trying to remind herself to breathe.

Her head's spinning, and all the world's stopped, and she's standing here in uncomfortable pointy-toed shoes, a white dress draping around her, his suit jacket too-big on her shoulders. It smells like engine oil, and _of course_ he'd likely spent most of today working on the _Falcon_. Until..

"Sweetheart!" she hears him call. He's laughing into her space, stretching into the room. "Princess," he smirks, and she means to scowl at him, she does, oh, _help,_ but he's in nothing but slacks and that damned vest. He's drinking the cheap champagne his friend brought them straight out of the bottle never mind that _her_ friends bought them crystalline champagne glasses with a decadent, decorative gold trim.

"Hi," she murmurs lamely, a bit breathless, a little short of dizzy, but graciously, _wisely,_ he doesn't speak of it. He comes to stand by her side where she's wont to fancy he really rather belongs, his hand a warm brush over hers that prickles the back of her neck, warms her heart.

"It's nice," he shrugs, aloof until he winks, and honestly, she hadn't meant to stare at this bed in this honeymoon suite for the past thirteen minutes. "Wouldn't you agree, Mrs. Han Solo?"

His grin's so smarmy, so crooked, Leia's really no choice at all but to kiss her newlywedded husband.

\- -- - -- -

Ben's nine, working with his dad on the old car he thinks is just the coolest, the one he hasn't recognized yet as a serious piece of garbage.

Ah, the innocence of impressionable youth, his mom worriedly poking her head out the window to ensure that welding mask is just for the aesthetic it will be about ten years from today. Han's not letting their son anywhere close to open flame, of _course not_.

There's nothing better than working with his dad on the _Falcon_ since they both got to play hooky today, though, him from school, his dad from whatever his dad does, and they get time like this a lot together. A bunch of doing nothing that's everything to them both. It really is.

Secret handshakes and their codenames for each other and all their playing pretend, pirates and astronauts and aliens and cowboys and occasionally even royalty so Mama doesn't have to be the damsel in distress waiting to be rescued -- it's life lessons and his dad saying things like _that's why you never become a drug addict_ and _don't make your mom a grandma before she's at least forty-five_ and _remember, the truth always comes out_ like the words mean something to just a kid ready for all the world, sometimes still riding on his dad's shoulders and holding his mom's hand when they cross the road to the supermarket from the parking lot.

"Why don't you bring those old tools out here, Nugget?" Han asks him with a glint in his eye. It's like a right of passage since _no one_ messes with Han Solo's tools but Han Solo, and because he's a lot better at this whole 'dad' thing than he thought he'd be, because life would be pretty great if it was moments like this, he chucks Ben under the chin, grins at him. "You're getting stronger than I am," he exaggerates in explanation and tactic permission.

Ben pretends he doesn't like his hair ruffled when his dad cards his grimy fingers through his hair (so long and so damned fluffy it's like Luke's from the late seventies, Jesus Harold Christ), but he does.

\- -- - -- -

And eventually, Rey turns seven.

Another day waking up to the belief her family's gonna come for her.

\- -- - -- -

So while things are different but good, sorta, Poe's leaning against the back fence locking in the baseball field, standing with Ben while he works himself into another existential crisis.

Smoke after smoke and lit match after lit match, it's the first time Ben's ever chain-smoked his problems away by one by one by he's so sorry, he is, he doesn't know he got to be so sullen and difficult, so angry and unforgiving and uncompromising and seventeen.

It's another year to the day marking the death of Poe's mom, and really, Poe smiles when he says it because when isn't Poe fucking smiling.

"You probably remember more of her than I do," he says bitterly, pulling the collar of Ben's borrowed coat closer around his own neck.

And Ben offers up his cigarette, and it's another and another and a nearly empty lighter, a facet for all their blame and differences, the first time Poe's ever chain-smoked his problems away one by one by when _did I get so stupid_ , so reckless, he is, he is, eighteen years old and already enlisted.

All he ever dreamed of doing, but God, telling his abuela and making her cry and shout that it _killed_ his parents, her daughter, it can't kill him, _I can't bury anymore,_ well.

"You know," Ben exhales, smoke against the grey sky, an angry gust of wind. "You don't got anything to prove."

And if Poe had a bone of meanness in his body, he'd scoff, scorn how that's so rich coming from someone that keeps fucking up the good chances he keeps getting. But he swore when he was six that he was gonna be Ben's best friend for life, and he'd rather get classy, simple, matching tattoos on the ass than leave him in the world alone when they both need a friend.

"I know."

Like it seriously fucking means something, "I don't know if you're holding onto flying for them, is all."

Poe's nice enough to not over-react in a fit of teenaged angry indignation and hurt hormones. "I'm not," he answers. There was never a doubt. He might not ever get to the stars, but he'll touch the clouds at least. "But you. Even I don't know what happened, Ben. With your parents."

So maybe things aren't good or different at all. Because Ben isn't as good as Poe Dameron, he does over-react, and his eyes are like slate, the thunderhead in the distance.

"Fuck off."

\- -- - -- -

When she's twelve, he's still seventeen somewhere next door, inside behind dark curtains and rain on the windowpane.

Her feet are in her mom's lap so she can paint her toes the bright yellow they've waited, like, five years to find, a summer color that isn't mustard or rusty or gross, just _yellow_ like all the unnecessary items of decor in this house precisely because it's her favorite color. Towels and the kitchen mats and the ottoman that doesn't match the couch. Her shower curtain and her bedspread, the plastic ring on her dad's house key. Everything yellow in this home, warm and bright and all hers and a home.

But no matter how many times her mom says things like _you know you can say or ask us anything, right, honey?_ or _I'm your best friend, right?_ because her mom totally is -- they're _Gilmore Girls_ re-runs while Dad cooks and her mom paints her toenails, she's still not gonna bare her soul or ask the questions she has about reproduction or anything like that.

Except it's been eating at her mind, so she just blurts it and stares at the drop of yellow it makes her mom drip onto her foot. "Why'd you adopt me?"

"..What do you mean?"

"I mean," she murmurs, "why'd you adopt me? Can you not have your own kids or can he not? I'm just wondering," she hurries to 'splain. She's not ungrateful -- the opposite really, it just isn't coming out right, and oh, no, it was stupid Ben picking out stupid _Annie_ to watch because he thought she'd like that curly red headed kid and they were watching all the classics from _Gone With the Wind_ to _Terminator_ and she couldn't stop crying. She couldn't.

This orphan sure as anything her parents are coming back so she _can't_ be adopted, it hurts.

"Nothing like that," her mom says slowly, trying to gauge if those are the right words or not. "Baby," she croons, twisting on the cap of the nail polish to close it. She pulls Rey closer, awkward preteen growth spurt making her too big for this be damned, and just.. just.

Moms give the best hugs.

"We wanted a little girl," she whispers into her hair, smothering a kiss to the side of her head, the crown. "We wanted a daughter, _you_ , and our lives are so much happier for it. We wouldn't trade you for the world."

Squeezing her arms around her mom's neck, she sniffles, "I'm so happy," and chokes on a sob as she burrows her face in her mom's neck. She's so warm; this is better than anything, being loved and cherished and held and wanted. "I love you," she says, and oh, it aches, she's smiling and crying, she can't stop, she does.

\- -- - -- -

She's fourteen, and he's eighteen, his head held up so high, so proud.

It's like a glimpse of greatness, seeing a flicker of the future in a moment in time, a guarantee of what's to come when he looked so regal, so sure.

He graduated seven hours ago, and instead of a party or packing or anything else he could do, he's watching a movie with her. His dad helped him make the pillow fort they're under, but oh, that he's talking about leaving under it, that it was exactly thirteen grades ago he started preschool a year late because he didn't want to leave his mama, it's ironic, it really is, their bodies parallel, her toes next to his face, his shins next to hers.

"I'm going to marry _Little Debbie_ ," he swears vaguely. The crackle of yet another snack cake wrapper, his favorite, a star crunch, and he groans.

"And I'll marry Ben," she laughs. But then, oh, God, she didn't just -- "and Jerry! _Ben & Jerry_ both."

"That's illegal," Ben says idly, not really bothered by it.

When she sits up, though, and he does, too, she doesn't laugh at his hair getting all ruffled and staticky where he's too tall for the roof of their blanket tent. It's dreadfully serious so suddenly, _The Princess Bride_ playing because she picks, he picks, _Heathers_ next, hope and reluctance and a pinch of sadness making her so transparent here.

"You'll, uhm," she murmurs, feeling her tongue like cotton in her mouth. _Inconceivable_. "You'll let me know, right? Before you leave when you do?"

"Yes," he answers automatically.

She believes him in that pause he takes, the way his eyes harden and his expression sobers. She's not sure she should, but she does. She can't not since for a moment it's like all the world's his, and it'd be hers, too, but who said she had to leave this living room floor?

"I will," he smiles. It's a little jaded.

It's a lie, but not for three months, and maybe she can't blame him, not really.

With his mother's eyes and his dad's grin, she's only fourteen but she wants to remember this forever and ever, how he yawns so big and quotes every line of _The Little Mermaid_ perfectly. His choice since it's one of his favorites, and why would she want to watch another rom-com anyway? Another story about another girl hopelessly in love with a boy without a shot in all the world, never mind the heroine knows what her soul mate looks like first thing in the morning and his birthday and his favorite color and his insecurities and his hidden talent.

No sad movies tonight. No sad _anything_ tonight.

(His hair's always a mess, his skin paler and pinker with sleepy pillow creases on just the right side of his face.

The seventeenth.

The dark blue the sky gets sometimes 'cause he likes the world at night when it feels like he's the only one alive and obligations and expectations are gone.

His mouth or his nose or his ears depending on the day. Also sometimes the way he laughs when he can't help it, when he's reduced to nothing but gasping inhales and claps like a retarded seal. Those are her favorite.

And not that he's told anyone else, but he can play piano. His mom taught him when he was young and some nights he still plays.)

Where's the book or movie about how hopelessly obsessed she is? Christ.

\- -- - -- -

"We should've put on sunscreen first," Rey tells Finn, closing her eyes to absorb all this sun coloring the insides of her eyelids red, flooding each part of herself with light. "Where do you wanna sit?"

And it's weird how she doesn't really remember things chronologically when she thinks too much on her life. She sees misplaced laughter and memories that make her cringe, things that just happen _so_ fast but so good right now, too, warm in this light and sweet as every breeze cooling her face.

And maybe it's because she turned sixteen three days ago and woke up today to a sunny sky and the world feeling _right_ for once, y'know? How somedays it's just the atmosphere and the way bare toes hit the bedroom floor just right, there's a general contentment that doesn't have to be chipper birds singing cheer right out of _Cinderella_. It's nothing spectacular, just good, and all the surprised but pleased returns of an unusual greet of _good morning_ that spreads the niceness of this day.

Today has been good.

She'd walked with Finn lazily up to the lake, a slow pace that led into the rest of their lives, maybe, or just almost their senior year of high school. It's spring now, only March, but today has been the warmest it's been in ever, months, with twigs that snapped under their feet and Poe's old jacket tied around his waist.

And she remembers the day Poe gave it to him. She also remembers seeing Ben after he drove Poe to the airport the first time, then she thinks about when he graduated high school, how ridiculous he looked hugging his very much not 6'3" mom. Adorable, though.

It's all non-linear, school-shopping with her mom, her dad teaching her how to fish, waking up another morning in an orphanage.

Poe calmly teaching her how to drive, her nine year old decision that someday, she was going to marry Ben Organa Solo and serve both cake _and_ ice cream at her wedding. Finn teaching her to ride a bike two years ago 'cause it was embarrassing for her not to know.

Ben taking a bite out of his half of their split grilled cheese, a shared two liter of a strawberry Fanta and pretzels, a can of that disgusting spray cheese that's much better with chocolate popcorn honestly, how he almost felt guilty since this was his job, wondering how they'd watched nearly every movie in existence and he'd forgotten to introduce her to the classic of _Anastasia_.

How he stared at her for most of it, waiting for her to laugh or cry or something, but she remembers how he liked to see her reaction when she'd watch a movie for the first time, like watching it for the first time again vicariously through her, he says, and God, it's all non-linear and random, these things she remembers, the times he'd snore so loud she had no choice but to smack him, every lie of _almost done_ to her parents, the time and disaster she took scissors to her hair.

Things she thought were long gone are dredged up from her memories, pinking her cheeks, and each step here with Finn, like they're walking into the rest of their lives, it's like they're living again everything they've done and then ever will be, and she's seeing her life flash before her eyes.

That's what it is.

Finn's her dearest friend, but she's also a teenage girl, so like, _of course_ she watches him pull off his shirt so his toned back is beautiful a few feet away from her eyes. He looks at her expectantly, though, the wonderful distraction from her impending death that he is, bored and so unimpressed with her.

"I didn't come up here for a granola bar picnic. We're gonna jump."

This "cliff" edge is only a few feet up, twelve or forty, she doesn't do math, and there's a picnic table up here, abandoned shoes, a few towels belonging to the kids that have already made the jump today and rest soaking in the sun just below. Initials are carved into the sturdy old tree here with roots deeper than this town itself, a rope swing hanging from its branches that's been the thrill of this town for generations.

Everyone loves it -- everyone except her. She's seeing her life flash before her eyes again, all of her mom's smiles, the terrible dad jokes, all the burritos she never got to eat.

"Rey," he groans, oh-so dramatic. "You always try to get me on roller coasters. What's the deal? This isn't even that high up."

"There's not a problem," she frowns, crossing her arms, eyeing the ledge not too far from Finn, the rope swing mere inches away from him. It's really not even that high, but _ugh_ , she thinks about this all the times she's been up here. "The kid that jumped the one time?"

"Rey," he laughs, almost husky, like a foot off the edge. "You're the only one I know that's never jumped. This will be _metaphorical_ , jumping into the future and shit."

"What?" she snickers, but then memory catches up, and really, she won't. She'll sunbathe up here all day. But. "It's dangerous," she grimaces, in way of an answer since she knows that look he's got. "They found a kid all bloated at the bottom after he fell." The memory makes her shiver in this seventy-nine degree heat. She'd never explicitly known if the kid died, but she's been told this story for ages. Enough times to have the fear of God put in her.

Frowning, she glances over to Finn's confused grimace. "You seriously don't know?"

"No?"

"Ben always told me." Her voice wavers a bit, a vie of the anxious fear to something conspiratorial like a ghost story. Even if it shakes her up. "A boy jumped from the rope swing and like, instantly, he was under and didn't come up. There were fishes crawling out of his eyes and -- oh," She stops, because oh, God.

Finn blinks at her. "..That's ridiculous, Rey."

"I know," she realizes suddenly, so quick to remember, so close to laughing that she _can't_ , what in the world, _Ben_ , she's seeing the truth in it at once and it's piercing her heart. "He lied," she realizes, whispering it. "It never happened. Ben just didn't want me to hurt myself, I think."

"Yeah," Finn shrugs. Then he kinda.. kinda just grins like she's sure she is. Everything that connotes just bursting bright like a blood orange, exploding like the sun in a couple more millenniums, but it just works so hard, it'll be magnificent, it deserves it.

"I'm such an idiot, I believed that." She shakes her head, and not for the first time, she steps over to Finn and the rope swing, the lovestruck initials carved into the tree.

"Yeah." He snickers, nudges her, gives her a look she doesn't want to think about.

So she just sees it all together, eight years old, wanting to swing down and jump into the lake below like Ben and Poe would, then the haunting imagery he spun to scare her out of wanting to, the look on his face.

He's so.. she absolutely can _not_ with him, what that likely doesn't mean that she'll convince herself is a bit more than just fondness anyways, so a little harder -- she jumps, iron in her veins and the emotion behind that memory sinking in her, Finn's words chasing her down.

"Yeah!" he whoops and hollers. "Just like Tarzan!"

\- -- - -- -

It's a few months later when he says it, "Life's not like a movie, kid," despite the hundreds they've watched on either of their room's floors over the years. And the lines that stick with them and mean something when they're pretentious enough to let themselves feel that deeply.

Courage and hope and regret and love and _alive_ , alive, oh, God, the faint glow of all these lights wet on the road, the way he keeps biting his lip, the way she's sure she's looking at him.

(And _no_ , Rey thinks, life isn't, because oh, if it was like a film and she was still sitting here in this ancient car, it'd be different, and all his smiles would be for her, and he'd have one hand on her heart, the other on the steering wheel.

They'd kiss and it'd feel like fire, feel like _forever_ , and she's only just sixteen, but he's watched her turn nine, and he'll see her turn nineteen, and if life was like a movie, then he'll turn to her any minute and say, _"I've loved you the entire time,"_ because he has to have felt it over all this time, all the conversations and the secrets they've admitted they couldn't even tell mirrors. The ones about fears and hopes and wishes, insecurities and regrets, and it can't be a coincidence they've been so here for each other when the world wasn't.

No one gets them like they do, and she can't articulate everything she wants to say, everything she feels with her heart beating so quick, it's so hard to not say it, _"I've loved you the entire time,"_ , it's driving her mad, she's dying here, she's a girl and a woman all at once and he's just the boy next door in a hoodie he's had for years, everything but his heart on his sleeve and reason in his veins and what she's not gonna say deaf on his ears.

Life's not a movie, because she'd be braver than this, she would be.

She lets herself wait ten seconds. Then _I'm sorry_ , she wants to say.)

"Fuck you," she mutters instead, slapping at his arm, and God, it hurts. She thinks it again, how maybe he's a dream she's held onto for too long, but then he's smiling at nothing but headlights. Driving her around without question of objection because the world became too much.

If this is going to be it, it's still one of the greatest things she's known.

\- -- - -- -

"I'm just saying," Poe just says, throwing one of his hands up.

Ben makes a disgusted face, one Rey catches out of the corner of her eye, but if she's the winning and the losing battle in him, then Poe's the delirious appetizer, Finn's the disappointment that didn't score any touchdowns -- not that anyone cares -- and Rey just can't stop laughing.

" _Anything_ can be a synonym for sex if it's a verb. Think about it."

"I'm trying not to," Finn snorts. Because it's Poe driving, he's in the passenger seat, so they're in the back together, snorting, scowling --

"Bang. Pound. Nail."

"Hammer."

"God," Rey winces.

Finn snorts. "Guess that's where they got 'screw'."

"Yes," Ben deadpans, "fucking is so much like construction work."

"Well," Poe shrugs, doing something sinful with his eyebrows. And she's not blind to how pretty he is. She could moan. "If you wanna baby, I guess," he grins. "End result or something."

She outright laughs so hard she clutches her stomach. "It could be like home maintenance, kinda."

"Oh, my God," groans Ben.

\- -- - -- -

One month before she turns seventeen, it's the first real time she's ever actually.. hugged. Him.

He's back home for no one knows how long. He's spent quite some time with his Uncle Luke, a timezone away, all his problems away, another few weeks to the several earlier in the year he'd been hiding up there.

And she doesn't know why really, how some things can be different behind closed doors and the parts of people you may never just really know. Like, his parents are amazing and always have been, so she doesn't get why sometimes he acts like they're the worst in the world, like he hates them, like _they_ hate him when it's so obvious there's nothing more important to them than their son.

Maybe it's just inferiority and feeling like a disappointment. Maybe it's the little things that fester and rot. Maybe he just never talked about his feelings or had too much heart and bad timing and circumstance made their lives a big misunderstanding.

She's heard him talk about when he was younger his mom always took him to work with her to keep him close. And her work galas, too, how he always only saw the legs of important people and more often than not curled on a seat next to her and fell asleep.

And his dad, they fucking _still_ fix cars together, but Ben always gets annoyed when Han won't let him weld or handle the most dangerous tools anymore. He thinks it means his dad thinks he's incapable, but Christ, she knows he's so proud his son can build something more with his hands than just cheap engine repairs, can sketch the plans or mechanics of anything to find its problem or correlated solution, and he just doesn't want to ruin that for Ben. He doesn't want him to hurt his hands when he's doing so much better than he ever did.

And she knows Ben loves them. His parents. She thinks he doesn't say it, but.

A fight with his dad got out of hand today. Literally, out of his hand and into a bruise of Han's face, something stupid, he keeps saying it, _I'm so stupid_ , but Han thinks he shouldn't have goaded him, enough should be enough, he did push too far, it really was an accident all things considered, Ben just trying to leave and Han trying to stop him and she _doesn't know_.

Through the curtains, she could see Ben sitting on the hood of the car smoking, talking to his dad in low tones quiet and still. Night around them, it was before sunset when Ben first stormed out and just after the stars came out that Han went back inside as quietly as he exited. He was careful to close the screen quietly, and just like that, there's all of Ben's thoughts bursting to the surface.

He smokes and he smokes. Doesn't even see her until she's standing in front of him in worn out Converse, hair all frazzled from bed head. He let her pluck the cigarette from his mouth, oddly, exhaling through his nose at her inexperienced way of stubbing it out.

And she doesn't say anything to him. She's not sure what she would, but he's not too sure what needs to be said either. They'll discover firsthand in a couple years that it all gravitates back towards needing to be forgiven first. Needing to be held.

So without thinking, she's so impulsive when it comes to him, she is, she could lay all her heart out on the driveway right now without second-guessing it until meeting his pitying gaze. But without thinking, she leans closer to him. Her thighs knock against his knees dangling off the hood of his car, and she can feel his muscles, his breath stall, the heat of his skin through his shirt when she tugs it. She throws her arms around his neck and doesn't say anything at all.

Not that she can feel his heart. Not that they've never hugged like an embrace before. Not that it's okay if he cries 'cause she cries constantly and there's no judgment out here, not until about three in the morning.

Sighing into her neck, he buries his face in her shoulder. His arms coming around her are slow, his hands dragging over her sides before encasing her, crushing her like she's all his solid ground or his ark or the sun if he's Icarus, a prodigal son, so damned stupid he's one mistake after another.

He doesn't say anything for a long while, not until he mumbles, "Thank you," into her jaw, so imperceptibly close. So. _So_.

\- -- - -- -

When she's seventeen, it's like a dream, one that probably has to end even though there's no way this can be real, not really --

"It's not like this is.. like there's pressure," she exhales. Her heart's suddenly quick, oh, God, there's a red light getting closer and closer, an awkward stretch of silence that's so impendingly terrifying since he's slowing the car. Ben is.

They're going to see a movie.

They're kinda on a date.

"It's not like I'm expecting anything," she continues with a gesture to the window and all the things she's not expecting, her voice so quiet but still so loud since they've stopped and there's no wind taking away all this pressure she said isn't on her, so much quiet, his eyes on her, oh, God.

"Of course," he says flippantly.

"I mean," but the way confusion sours his face and she's messing all of this up with too many thoughts, she could get out and walk home herself right now. She should. She really should. It'd been only a couple months since he.. since he actually _kissed_ her. And this, this "date" to the movies, they've done this since before he could legally drive, and she's prided herself on knowing all of his body language and over-analyzing everything he says and does, but he's motionless save for his hands turning the steering wheel, so still, so _careless_.

Now isn't the time to be self-conscious and inferior and so nervous she's missing all her childish dreams come true, but reality's hitting her like his car crash glaring grin when he swerves into the next lane and in front of a Fiat. She's missing it. It's like some dreams really aren't as great as the instant they happen or the flicker of consciousness right after waking. Some dreams maybe just need to end, but goodness, she _can't_ , why now, why when she's in the car with a beautiful boy she's fancied herself in love with forever?

She feels like she's robbed a store or swallowed a bunch of pills or stalked Prince Eric at Disney World, so nervous and exhilarated and messing all this up, so tired she's almost shaking, has no words for how this feels just that it's so different from what she imagined. It's taking root in her body. Like he knows, he reaches out briefly to touch her arm, soothing her absently like it's a knee jerk reaction out of this dream realm, and almost -- she almost feels disappointed already. She can't let herself regret what hasn't even happened yet when she finally had the courage and the heart to speak up.

"I mean, like," she tries again, sucking in a deep breath. "I'm not expecting anything. From this." _Us_ she almost says but doesn't. Her teeth bite at her lip to keep from laughing at how tense and awkward she is. "Like tomorrow, right?"

"Tomorrow," he re-affirms. He doesn't know what the hell she's talking about, but he's listening. And he can see her; for once she's not wearing his sunglasses. She's not hiding.

"We could hate each other tomorrow or something," she shrugs. Carelessly, expressionless, she impassively stares out her window, and he's three seconds of missing this red light gone to green because he's staring at her.

"Sure," he frowns, she can hear it, can sense that tension in his arms that sends a warning signal to her brain for her to over-react to.

"We could decide this was awful and.. y'know, _not_ ," she mutters.

He actually startles. Not like he's mad, but just. "Rey," he says gruffly. "Can you look at me?"

"Look at the road; you're driving."

"Kid," and that sincerely makes him laugh. She's breathless for a second, but God, she's going to hyperventilate even though she hasn't taken a proper deep breath since he kissed her four months ago. "I can take you back home, y'know? If this, uh. Shit. If this is making you.. uncomfortable," he offers, the last word garbled under his breath.

"No." Except she sounds doubtful, and that's not it at all. She can't articulate it. Everything she's ever wanted now without her knowing how to hold onto it, _hold on_ , she says it with a wince that puts all her heart on display, "It's not like this has to be a date."

"Except." The few seconds he pauses are sure sweet agony. His tone is patient, yeah, but kinda like she's being stupid, kinda like it's maybe him. That's the problem. Well. "We.. Rey. This is actually kinda really a date," he frowns. "We're on a date."

"Yes, but I'm not expecting anything," she repeats, a broken record, cracked and piercing and so, so sorry. She needs to get herself together.

"You don't have high expectations."

"That's not -- no! No, not like that," she didn't mean it like that, she _swears_. But his annoyance is tangible. Hers is awkward. "I sort of thought this would be perfect," she admits reluctantly. They're a few hundred feet away from the next spotlight, close enough to see it turn yellow. Tonight is a record of almosts.

"Perfection is abstract," he deadpans without missing a beat.

 _Well_ , she doesn't say. _I've had a lot of time to think about it_.

"I'm sorry I'm making it weird," she mumbles, even as she winces at him, turning in the passenger side to finally face him directly.

Everything goes green, then with the wind on his face, his smirk a blindside, she eats her heart out. "You're making it perfect," he snarks. "Unless I wake up tomorrow and hate you? Then we'll never see each other again, I guess. Oh, well."

"In case I forget to tell you," she interrupts, smiling just to clear her throat nervously, more anxious than she can say. "I, uhm. I had a really nice time tonight."

"Me, too," he says, gasping a bit like he's breathless, like he's surprised.

\- -- - -- -

When she becomes his favorite time of the day, she's already eighteen.

And she's been most of his favorite memories for years now, but the little catch her heart gives when he smiles at her from across the kitchen, Easter excitement coloring everyone in the Organa Solo house brilliant, it's something so basic and familiar as just catching his eyes through all the people. All the cooking.

His hair's wet like he got caught in the April rain that promises a dreary spring, and the old dryer that needs a kick closed sometimes sounds like WWIII is being announced in the utility room a hallway away, so his church-appropriate clothes are probably there -- he's dressed like his dad out under the awning by the grill, worn jeans and that holey band t-shirt with the frayed sleeves and socks with Easter eggs on them, oh wow, all he does is look at her and smile, but at some point..

It's changed? It's stopped feeling like a fantasy. It feels real. And messy. And wonderful.

At some point she stops helping make (eat) all the deviled eggs to coincidentally wander off to wherever Ben's gone. Her pastel blue painted toes halfway up the stairs when she hears it, the second step creak, a murmured _hi_ that leaves her frozen, takes all sense and thought from her.

"Ben," she exhales, so light and happy it skips in her heart. When she turns to face him, for once he's at her eye level. On the step below her, they're face to face and so close, and goodness, she likes this, being close to the same height, looking into him instead of up. "You were almost late, y'know."

"Mhmm." So noncommittal, but she's setting her hands on his shoulders and laughing airily when he reaches for the skirt of her dress, lightly pulls on the soft yellow fabric. "You look nice."

"For Jesus," she whispers, winding her colored Easter egg stained fingers in the ends of his damp hair, kissing him, kissing him, _oh_ , she curls into his space, is suddenly so much heat.

He wraps his arms around her waist tightly, so tight that he's kissing all the air from her lungs with too much teeth, not enough tongue. She tastes like brunch at this holiday he was going to skip, but now with the way he can recognize the smile on her face as anything other than than general amusement and there's a softness to his brown eyes that makes her want to cry, well, she's not nervous, but when she leans or he presses and their thighs touch -- she backs up a step.

Like a haze, all her relief flooding like warmth into her bones. Breathing is just as hard for him as it is for her, and she leaves him there on the stairs when Poe walks through the front door with his gran.

But then goodness, other times.

When she's a month or two past graduating, their hug lasts a little too long.

Sunshine and sweat and his hands on her hips, the way he said her name, "Rey," like it was to say sorry or to placate her or to keep her on her side of the garage. Christ, all the air conditioner making it frigid in here, cold surrounding them and the heat between them trapping their bodies since she showed up with pizza and that bright look in her eyes. One that usually ends with his teeth grazing her neck before he kisses her and kisses her, but the step she inches closer, oh, he could die.

When their thighs touch this time, she doesn't move away, she presses into him like she wants to see how close they can get, how he'll fit against her if she tests the close position, if he presses into the slight spread of her thighs.

"This is nice," she whispers against his shoulder, muffled like it's tearing her up, being this warm, this close. Her face is on fire, but being so near to him, breathless with his arms wrapped so tight around her, this is more than nice.

From the sounds of his shallow breaths, it's effecting him just as much. "Yeah," he stammers. He squeezes her hips to keep her still; it's all he can do to not rock up against her.

Then.

Another month and she's pressed against the backseat of the _Falcon_. They haven't made out like junior high kids since, like, _yesterday_ , this little laugh between them they share and trade like that accidental piece of gum a couple weeks ago, eager kisses and her wanting gasps, oh, _oh_ , how time freezes and everything wanes when he pulls up her shirt, touches her stomach skin to skin.

"Ben," she whines, and he's burning, splaying his fingers over her smooth abdomen, caught between playing it safe or risking death, touching just skin or curving his hand up to her bra, sliding it beneath the hem of her jeans. "Oh, my God," she gasps, hitting her head on the door.

She'll have hickeys to cover up before tonight, and this is way more than just a kiss, one she feels down to her toes or one she presses sweetly to his cheek. It's so cramped back here, she doesn't know he fits just that he does _against her_ , and his eyes are dark looking down at her, darker than she's ever seen them.

She wants to touch all of him, to feel his skin completely against hers. An eye for an eye, she skims her fingertips underneath his shirt to feel the muscles of his abdomen quiver. For a split second, she thinks she hears him groan, but she's panting so loud she can barely here her own thoughts. She thinks a mantra of _more_ , more of him sucking on her neck and his.. oh, God.

"We're not having sex in this car," she says, breathy and forceful until she keens a moan when his teeth replace his lips.

"We're not," he agrees, raspier than she's ever heard him. She can't help the want flooding into each part of her, so without thinking, she wraps just her right leg around his back, all she can move in the backseat, but it brings them closer than they've maybe ever been. He doesn't sound like he means it when he says it, "I can stop," low in his voice, steady in his chest and erratic like his heart against hers. " _Rey_ ," it's so familiar and new, instinct for her to press herself up into him and the grinding heat. "Tell me to stop," he whispers into her throat.

His teeth nip a sharp gasp from her, biting hard into her skin as she holds onto his shoulders. She grinds herself against him needily, urgency making everything hard and quick and hotter than she's ever felt, _wet_ ; it's all she can do not lose her sense here. She's trembling and moaning and the sensation is so much more than anything she's ever felt. "Don't stop completely," she whines, arching her back.

In a flicker of impulsive bravery, she starts her hand down his abdomen to the belt of his jeans, but he curses in the space between them and covers her wrist with his hand. "That's not gonna help," he almost laughs. He might if his ribs weren't constricting, if she weren't flushed and panting under him in the _Falcon_. "Here."

She squeals when he shifts her like she's nothing. He's moved them so her hips are angled on his thigh instead of him so.. _God_ , he was thinking this would be less intimate somehow, her grinding against his thigh with those damned leggings he could probably feel her --

"Oh," she groans, her perfect lips rounding. She's never felt this needy, this alive, not even with her own fingers. His coarse palms finally smooth up her ribs, finally almost to her breasts, if her nipples get any harder, oh, God, she bites his lip to stifle her whine.

But it ends with someone knocking on the _Falcon's_ window. Of course it does.

"Are you kids having fun?!" Finn shouts at them from outside. "The movie you were gonna see started an hour ago."

Well.

Groaning in annoyance (or disappointment, she can hope), Ben kinda just collapses on her. "Go away," he sulks, and he's crushing her sternum so she can barely breathe, but she wasn't already seconds ago, so still, _why_.

"Finn, why."

"Pfft," he quips cheerfully, muffled then clear when he opens the backseat door. "..Really. You don't even lock the doors. Or leave the driveway? I raised you kids better than that."

"Finn," she sighs. She elbows Ben to get him off her, trying to scooch out of the way so there's enough room for them to right themselves. Wordlessly, she hands him his shirt back, not missing the surprised look down at himself he gives. He must've missed her tugging it off, and that.. well, at least they know they fit in the backseat.

They should've tried it sooner, honestly.

\- -- - -- -

It wasn't their first fight, God, it wasn't, their first real talk when she was eight and he was difficult ended in half an argument. On good days, they can't even pass the salt without being snide, but still, this was the first argument he'd taken for granted, her presence in his life no longer something dispensable or a fallback. She may have gotten used to the minutes and months without him, but every time he's needed her, she's been there, and now he has something to lose.

She slammed the door instead of pressing up to her toes, laughing a kiss into his cheek.

She told him he was selfish and objective and controlling and jealous and irrational and couldn't understand a joke and she would have walked herself home if he didn't keep locking the doors of the _Falcon_ to prevent her from getting out.

She said not to call her tomorrow when he was planning to, forgiveness a bitter pill and an apology a bruised fist and the offended, hurt look on her face, and he was waiting on the porch for an hour and a half before her mom came out with coffee, told him he should go home.

Three days later and then nothing but her bedroom window finally opened, her stubbornness not even a candle against his; he ignored it, lights it up and smokes.

"You never forget your first," his dad says, breathy like it means something, a first love just eating the both of them up.

"That's what they say," Ben agrees. Not that his dad's putting words in his mouth. It's just weird, how bad the world is when that one person's kinda rightfully angry. There's a cigarette tucked behind his ear like a pencil, fumes frying his brains, making philosophers out of them both. "You can try, though."

"What do they say about the seconds again?" his dad wonders. But oh, he knows, he remembers lots of hairspray and cherry chapstick and saying it outloud, _shit, I think I'm in love with you_ , sayings like _please_ and _stay_ for once in his life, how easy it was to fight himself instead of her.

They say things that are how he didn't leave a note and an exasperated phone call from all her searching in a phone book, _of course I loved you, I loved you, I love you, I know_ and --

God, they say things like _dada_ for their first word, and that's.. that's all that matters.

To Han.

He keeps staring at Ben.

Eventually, he passes the cigarette back. "What about you?" he asks him.

"I don't know," Ben lies, sighing, exhaling smoke. He kinda just has an only. Or an almost. A forever, if he's gonna think about it.

Except he's not. It all gravitates towards forgiveness first.

\- -- - -- -

"Tell me something," she tells him, giddy and grinning. They're walking the sunset streets, a bag of Greek take-out and another bag from that Chinese place he's obsessed with in one of his hands.

She's been taking pictures of him all evening, next to lamps and with a backdrop of clouds, different lights haloing him like she's some kind of photographer. But well, if it's his face all her over her phone, his scowls and his smiles and God, the one perfectly timed picture of him laughing -- she could pursue photography. Totally.

"What do you want me to say?"

They've been quiet enough to have it be nice, just air and the routine of this and how good it feels. She pulls on his wrist so she can hold his hand, grinning when he lets her twine their fingers all close and knit together, palm to palm, his thumb over hers.

"Anything," she says. The sky is all purple and yellow, streetlights are starting to turn on one by one, and the light in his eyes right now, the dark brown is like honeyed amber pouring all over. She can't breathe, everything in her _aches_ for this, the twitch of his mouth that's hiding a smile, his resignation when she stops him on the walk outside the boutique where she got a cute necklace that one time. His lack of surprise when she presses into his chest and rests her cheek over his jacket over his heart. "Tell me anything."

Feeling him exhale a laugh into her hair, his arm comes around her back to keep her still. She likes this holding and being held thing, the friendship that's built this up bit by bit. "What do you want me to do?" he asks, his voice the fond sort of exasperated she recognizes.

"I want you to stay," she admits. A car horn blares in the distance, people are laughing down the street, the bistro employee is changing the specials on the chalk sign just a few feet away. And Rey squeezes her arms around him as tight as she can, tight enough though he can still laugh into her forehead when he bends just a bit to kiss her. "Stay," she mumbles, closing her eyes.

"Okay," he says, "okay, I'm not going anywhere, y'know, not without you, right?" He tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and chucks her under the chin.

"I mean, like, ever," she clarifies, hearing him laugh again like a gust of wind.

A slip of their hands and he catches her last three fingers with his, starts back the way to where the _Falcon_ is parked. "Ever," he promises, grinning at her over his shoulder with all the weightlessness of stress-free promises it's so easy to not contemplate the value of now. Not now, when it's so easy and good. As light as soy sauce.

\- -- - -- -

She's twenty, and he's already twenty-five, and oh, fucking hell, he's four feet away from the door, his hand already outstretched to unlock the bolt, to open their handprinted door.

They did this just last week, his short temper 'cause work's been driving him mad, 'cause he's angry and burning out doing more managing than his boss is. She's getting tired of it, of the careless way he sometimes can't catch the rude things he'll say, censorless and senseless and hurtful, yeah, but she can handle it. He doesn't scare her, and he might get a rise out of her, but it became more than pettiness at some point.

The times like this he could have walked out to be another runaway like he's sixteen and a refuge from teenage bullshit angst again, his shoulders have slumped like it's defeat or resignation.

Or exhaustion. Or burden from all the things he's not going to say to her face or to himself.

Or maybe just apology, because how annoyed she was at him dissipates with the look in his eyes full of an emotion she doesn't have the name for. It catches in her throat, almost makes her want to cry at the feeling staring at her, but imperceptibly, he shakes his head once.

And he steps back, unclenching his fists. He stares at the floor like a kid, and he sounds ashamed when he says it, "I'm not very nice to you."

"That's not true," she frowns, because it's not. All these years, flickers of conversations, he's always had a temper, but he's always been nice and patient and hers when it counted. And it did. She might not be here if it didn't, except then it hits her so strongly standing here in sweats, the scent of Chinese food everywhere.

Oh, God.

"No," he contradicts, and that set of his jaw, his hand through his hair, he's so much like his dad. "It's not fair to you. I shouldn't be taking my anger out on you."

"Your stress."

"My stress," he clarifies.

She rocks back on her toes, buries her toes in this awful shaggy bright blue rug she picked out. She adds, "It's unhealthy," for him and their relationship, but he doesn't need the clarification.

"It's unhealthy," he repeats, one corner of his mouth quirking up cheekily.

"It's not funny."

"Then why're you smiling?"

She hadn't realized she was until he points it out. "It's nothing," she says, dubious since he's doubtful and looking unsure. It's nothing really at all aside from the fact that he stayed and they're kinda pretty okay together and she thinks it's hilarious when he's mad and he knows well enough by now that she's defiant and very much won't follow his attitude when he wants to storm away. They make it work, somehow, _wow_ , they do.

And she wants to make it work with him forever, she realizes, _grins_ so big he looks concerned, but fuck, at the same time, it's.. if he actually says it. Good-bye. She's not sure, but she thinks she's the type of person that's gonna be gone from him forever if she has to say it, too.

"Do you just.." Glancing around to their home and the place they've made for themselves, then the door, he turns his eyes back on her, takes a step that has them nearly parallel from each other. "Do you just wanna watch a movie? Go get ice cream?"

"Yes," she exhales, staying where she stands with her heart starting to falter, her knees gone to jelly.

Her relief hurts him just a little. "I'm so tired of messing this up."

But it was just a bad day. He's reaching for too many stars now, is thinking along the timeline of a future. _Think about what you want_.

"C'mere," she tells him simply. She spreads out her arms just as slow as she smiles. "Let me hold you."

\- -- - -- -

"What the fuck," Ben whispers to himself, puzzled and mystified and confused and what the _fuck_ , "Rey, what did you do to yourself."

"I know," she whines, and it burns, oh, it burns, she went to the lake to get some sun after finals with Finn like they used to, and it was supposed to be fun, so much fun, but the sun _burn_ , oh, God. "He let me fall asleep," she explains, her entire face red around her (his) stolen sunglasses. He's scared for her when she takes them off, still twenty, so close to almost not.

"Rey," he coos, setting all his work paperwork down on the thrift coffee table so he can get up and help her ease her bag off her shoulder. It's red, and it looks like she can't move her arms. "Sweetheart," he gasps, trying not to laugh so, _so_ hard. "Baby, what the fuck."

"You swear too much," she gripes. She slowly takes off her sunglasses, schooling her face neutral against what he's sure is the excruciating pain of all that red.

His beautiful lobster girlfriend, just in time for his company dinner, too.

There are two white circles making her the most gorgeous wannabe raccoon ever -- all he can do not to laugh while it looks like she'll cry because she's taking off her strappy sandals, lines red and white on her poor feet too, oh, no.

"Ouch," she mumbles pitifully, sniffling, sticking out her bottom lip.

He lets his gaze drop for just a second, then "Ouch," he agrees. He gives her an awkward pat on the arm since kissing her might hurt her even more.

"Ow! Shit, Ben!"

"Sorry!" Holding up his hands, he winces for her, making a face when she turns her back. "I'll get the aloe, yeah?"

"Yeah," she groans, starting to leave a slow, painful trail of her clothes to their room. "I always forget the sunscreen."

"I coulda brought it for you," he calls, rummaging through the fridge for the aloe. It takes him longer than it should and more praying than he's done in months to find it. Then tucking the cold bottle of green magic under his arm, picking up her capris as he goes, her v-neck purple shirt, the weird wrappy thing she likes to wear that's somewhere between autumn and spring, he hopes she won't blister too bad if she does. Christ.

She's laying face-up on the bed when he comes in, blindly tossing her clothes to the hamper and hitting the nightstand. She's got all but her panties on, light pink ones with the white trim he likes, but where he'd probably die seeing her like this any other day -- nope. Nope. All the red fucking _everywhere_ , dividing sections of her arms in strips of sunburn and her pale skin. Red from her ankles to her shins, a small strip of red over her stomach. A stark _V_ above her breasts. Her face, Jesus Christ.

"Don't laugh," she warns him, sighing with her eyes closed. "Showering's gonna hurt."

"Everything's gonna hurt. You remember you've gotta go to dinner with me tonight, right?" he winces.

"I am not."

"You are."

"I'm not," she repeats. "I'll look ridiculous."

"That's my girlfriend you're talking about," he says idly. If it wouldn't hurt, he knows she'd scowl at him, but knowing her face that well is enough. "I'm gonna put this on you," he tells her, giving her time to object, to shove him away since he's maybe making this a bit too sexual. Oh, well.

Her legs are just red from her ankles to below her knees, so really, stepping over, pulling at the edge of the blanket instead of her feet to get her closer, parting her legs. He does love that white lace.

"You can not be serious," she snorts, bending up one of her knees.

"When you're all like this, the burns aren't actually that bad," he smirks, dropping to his knees, so gently starting to lather aloe soothingly from her left ankle up. The gel makes his rough hands smoother to her skin, and while he knows she likes the calluses, she's all but purring at how good it has to feel. When he sets his lips against the inside of her knee, though, she starts.

"Ben!" The faint edge of his teeth, and he can hear the hitch in her breath, can feel the tension of her heels pressing against the edge of the bed frame. "You can't."

"I can."

"I can't," she gasps, breathily moaning when he massages aloe tenderly to her other shin, his long fingers so gentle and cooly warm enough to feel just right to her. Oh, God.

"Just let me make you feel good," he murmurs, sliding his palms up her thighs when he rises. His mouth tongues kisses up her legs as he goes, closer and closer, and sunburn be damned, she fists her hands in his hair tightly when his tongue dots hot-wet presses near her apex.

"Oh, my God," she says sharply, sucking in a breath. She's so tense, it's almost painful on her shoulders to press into the sheets when her back arches in instinct, but it'd be more painful not to. He's tonguing the edges of her panties, biting into the crease of her thigh, and she, she -- _oh_ , he drags his tongue up over the cloth covering her sex and he can _smell_ her. He licks over the soft pink fabric she's wet with already, noses just above where she needs him, "oh, _Ben_."

"Mmm," he drawls, pressing kisses up, smoothing over her wriggling hips with his tongue.

"You tease," she accuses, _whines_ when he sucks a spot over her stomach.

"I'm not done with the aloe," he grins, crooked at one corner of his mouth. He reaches for it a little too purposefully, breathing a little harder. He places one of his knees between hers, his erection so, _so_ close, she _is_ , he's..

Squeezing aloe out from the bottle onto her chest, over her stomach, her arms, her breasts.

It's cold instant and everywhere. Not even where she's burned, but then he starts to laugh, so loud and quick and hysteric, he's covering her in all this green gel and snorts, "Imagine if this was lube."

"It'd be too slippery, wouldn't it?" And she grins, but just because he's infectious.

"We could try."

"We'll need more lube."

"Sweetheart," he snarks. "What else do I have a 401K for?"

He's smearing aloe all over her nipples, her neck. Her armpits and the sheets, his finger tracing over her belly button in the green gel. He leaves his aloed handprint over her ribs, looking so pleased with himself, so _adoring_ down at her, she can't help it. Her heart is so full of his smiles, his hands, _him_ , that it comes out of her mouth like he pulls it from her, quiet and sure, "I love you."

Except he freezes like how cold this pretend-lotion is, stares down at her with his eyes as wide as his gaping mouth. And because she's a coward, because she's self-conscious for just a breath, she laughs like her giggles are fleeing her soul.

"When you're this giddy," she finishes, smearing aloe onto his neck so she can hold him. So she can feel how quick his pulse is jumping under his skin. "I love you grinning like this."

"Me, too," he says after a beat too long. He grins, though. So bright. Just for her. He's all hers, Christ, he loves the fuck out of her and kisses so tenderly her cheek, his eyelashes whispering what he won't into the sunburn.

\- -- - -- -

And like a cliché, that's how it happens, at first later that night at the dinner his work is hosting.

She goes even though she doesn't want to, she looks ridiculous, she really does, but he said it without batting an eye, "You're not gonna embarrass me."

And he told her to wear flats because they make her more comfortable never mind how sexy he thinks she is in heels. And all the lab goons _aww_ 'ed when he bent his knees slightly so Rey could better whisper in his ear when she had to tell him something. And because she loves to dance even when he doesn't and she couldn't 'cause sunburn, he swayed with her on the dance floor without either of them moving their feet.

It's amazing to his partners how their co-worker can scare the interns and joke with the custodians and have a basketball hoop over his office's trash can and know all the lyrics to _Frozen_ songs and have thrown at least three reported cell phones out his fifth story window while this. 

When Rey finishes her white chocolate cake in seconds, he swears, they fight for it with their forks and her giggles, and really, love made Ben a fool or a better person.

He says it, "I love you," before biting his lip, letting his eyes travel up and down her body. "In that color."

A dark green dress he's seen before, but damn, her heart.

Just like a cliché.

\- -- - -- -

Another month, and _Born In the U.S.A._ is whitenoise on the radio, a low thrum between them and his nice suit jacket, her floral print dress.

She's not complaining about all the wind catching in her hair and ruining the curls that took her forty-five minutes, though, nor how her hair keeps sticking to her lipgloss. It's a bright pink sheen that's changing her life one coat at a time, a taste of the weird bubblegum flavor at a time.

They're driving down from Poe's and down to her parents, forty minutes so far in the traffic that is _oddly_ more pleasant with him letting her control the radio, him exerting all his self-restraint.

Her hand started on his knee and keeps inching further up his thigh. She skims her nails over the denim, traces patterns of hearts and smiley faces and words like _love_ and _Mister and Misses Ben Solo_ on his leg.

It makes her giggle at nothing but content happiness, girlish and dazed and unbuckling her seatbelt so she can slide closer to him.

"I am driving."

"Concentrate," she preens, tucking her hair behind her ear just for the wind to pull it free again. It makes him laugh, nothing but her hair flying about in his peripheral vision, but then she presses as close as she can next to him, caresses his cheek, says it so solemnly that he can't laugh anymore. "I love you, Ben."

In the second he meets her eyes, he glances at her like he's never seen her before, like she's -- God, like she's his _everything_ here in the passenger seat. Maroon 5 and the spare instant he lets his eyes drop to her mouth. The wind pink on his cheeks, his free hand curving to hers, to press her wrist to his lips like he always used to. It still makes her shiver. "You know I love you."

"I do," she sighs, so blissful it's intoxicating. Instead of her hand on his cheek, she knots her fingers through his hair and dots kisses over his cheek instead. She grins her lips to his jaw, his temple, his ear, his neck: chaste, bumbling pecks that pepper him in all the affection she's had stockpiling for him all these years. When she fists her hand in his t-shirt, he all but groans, patting on her thigh and easing on the brakes just a bit for safety.

"No," she grins, pressing her nose to his shoulder. "Go the speed limit."

He laughs out of the corner of his mouth she's not trying to kiss, eyes stalwartly focused ahead, but Jesus, he knows that look she's got. "You're gonna get us killed," he snorts.

And he's a fucking idiot, may as well be buried six feet under, play The Smiths at his funeral, _such a heavenly way to die.._

"Okay, so, uhm."

"Uhm," he encourages to placate her.

"When we get to my mom and dad's?" she starts. She's quiet when he switches on the air and rolls up the windows so he can hear her better. It makes her a bit nervous, the intent look on his face, so she traces the word over his leg again, _love_. It makes him smile, and it's so true with her cheek against his shoulder before he jostles his arm around her instead. Love.

"Okay," she tries again. "Maybe we should start to think about the future? Planning and," goodness, she's going to start to ramble, an awkward bit of urgency seeping into her voice. But she's officially living with him now. "Decide what you want," she smiles. They're pulling to a stop at a red light, and he turns his head, kisses the side of her hair. She presses into it, the rise and fall of her chest _so_ many nervous breaths now, but she wants to say this.

Because she has things that she wants. And she wants to have plans. And a future. With Ben.

"It's not like I'm expecting to get married tonight," she teases, grinning when he laughs outloud. "No lifetime commitments or anything."

"Of course not," he snarks, those three years ago on the tip of his tongue. "For worse or for better, right?"

"Damn right." They're by McDonald's and so close to her home now, so close, seconds are slipping out of the windshield and her hands; she pulls at his shirt, his shoulder. "Nothing else matters, okay?" she says like she's convincing him. "Just how much I love you. We've been through a lot of bullshit."

"Rey," he laughs, and he's missing it, he's got it all wrong, he's still got her, "you already said you'd move in with me."

"And now you're completely mine," she finishes, grinning at him. She takes his hand from her shoulder to kiss his fingertips, and a chance look out the window, his parents and hers a few driveways away, there's the tree she could have kissed him by when she was sixteen.

"Ever think maybe we wasted time?" she asks him suddenly, glancing up to him.

He's checking both sides of the street, though, pulling into the driveway. Then his attention's all focused on her, he's squeezing his hands around her waist while her mom watches from behind the screen door, an intensity in his eyes that makes her _burn_ , and she is. She is. "What do you mean?" he wonders. "We've still got lots of daylight."

"No, like, the years," she frowns, or tries to. He's kissing the tip of her nose, her cheeks, her chin. She gasps in giddy delight, _love_ , which is precisely what he says.

"Love," he calls her, his eyes closed, his lips touching hers without the heat of a kiss but still full of heart that just takes up each inch of her, and she can feel the quirk of his mouth into a smile against her, the lilt of his chin. "If all that time was wasted, then what the fuck are we doing here?"

"Existing," she whispers, inhaling sharply when his tongue licks her lips open, finds hers and sucks.

"Being together," he corrects when she can breathe, when he can. His teeth tug her bottom lip gently, and then with a sweet kiss to her forehead, he leaves her there breathless. "Let's go think about our future," he snarks, giving her a wink before he unbuckles his seatbelt, steps out of the _Falcon_ and onto the driveway.

His Converse is yellow. Her birthdate is his phone's passcode. Her name is his computer password. His hands can't stop reaching for her, his eyes can't stop seeking her out. His knees might be trembling -- she gets out his side of the car, hip-checks him, and he'll follow her around the whole galaxy probably. Into the lions' den. For worse or for better, right?

Oh, shit.

 _Shit_.

\- -- - -- -

Because it was his Uncle Lando that told him to always come to him for help if he's ever in trouble, like real bad trouble, he phones him from his office in a year, twenty-five years old and suddenly feeling fifteen.

"Where's the fire, kid?" his uncle asks the instant he steps out of his sleek, not-so inconspicuous black car, shadowed windows, heated leather seats, a mini bar, fuck's sake, at least he didn't bring his driver.

Ben vaguely wonders if he's packing heat.

But then Lando whistles low, shakes his head with the reverent daze of someone that's seen the ghost of an ex-lover laughing across the room. "The _Falcon_ ," he whispers. He bends to peer in the tarnished silver edging a line straight across the doors, the clean windows, the memories. Ben feels the kinda smugness that's strangers occasionally offering to buy the old rust bucket 'cause with just a lot more care, this baby's a gem. He's so grateful and impressed his dad won her in a game.

At least, he was.

"You know I lost my virginity in this car," Lando tells him like he's reliving the glory days of.. Christ, the sixties? Early seventies?

"Oh -- oh, my God," Ben half-shouts, flinching away from the _Falcon_ , his baby, what the fuck, he's regretting so much of everything, he can't even breathe, he should have gone straight to Luke. Or his dad.

"I'm pulling your leg," Lando snickers, ceremoniously straightening his tie and not joking at all. He can tell. "Now. You said you were in trouble?"

"Uh," Ben mutters. "You assumed I was in trouble."

"You only call when you're in trouble. Or it's Thanksgiving."

"..Not just Thanksgiving."

"You stopped sending me Christmas cards when you were twelve, Ben."

"Yeeeah," Ben winces, drawing the word out. "But you still took all my phone calls, and I went to that court with you the once."

And the time he was fifteen, he took a bus to Lando's estate a couple hours away, waited three long hours for someone to buzz him in because the guards didn't believe he was family.

"Well," Lando sighs. Then smiles so big it's like it's every holiday since tenth grade, his arms coming around him to hug him tightly. "Kid, I always told you, any problems, anything you ever need, you come to me."

"I know," he grins, can't help it. He clasps his uncle on the shoulder, and then with a deep breath, the heart attack that's this woman scaring the life out of him, Rey, taking all his future so willingly, he blurts it. "I'm gonna get married."

Lando nearly trips on the curb. His dark eyes go wide, his swarthy complexion pale like he's seeing a ghost. The ghost of Han saying the same thing twenty-odd years ago. "..By choice?"

"Yeah," Ben shrugs vaguely. Except God, he's grinning, life with Rey has made everything so bright, he's looking up to the clouds like she's there tethering him, a wary, shocked look staring back at him when he comes back.

"You're not telling me so I can talk you out of it, are you?"

"Fuck no. Uncle Lando, I'm gonna marry Rey. If -- if she says yes." He gestures behind them to the jewelry store on this lane he asked to meet on, feeling proud like he's finally got something right when understanding meets recognition and joy in the Governor's eyes.

"You give her any reasons to say no?" Lando jests, starting for the shop with a gleam in his eyes, purpose in his strides. A bell above the door jingles when he holds it up for Ben, an instant chorus of _how are you today?_ welcoming them into the promise of good service and a deal if the kid sticks with him in here.

"Everyday, honestly," Ben mutters. But he knows they're not perfect together. They just feel like they are. He's smiling like a fool.

When he starts for the simple settings he's sure Rey would want, casually, Lando follows behind him. "You're going to get a real diamond?" he asks curiously. But with an innocence that used to say his dice weren't loaded.

The sales-guy in his pressed suit narrows his eyes, but all Ben does is laugh, squeeze his eyes closed, press his forehead to the glass display in anxiety before straightening back up. "Fuck," he whispers, staring at all these rings. They're making it real. "Yeah, I'm getting her a real one."

"Ah." In support, his uncle clasps his hand to his shoulder and stares down through the glass. "You want to tell us about her?" he says lightly, "get the edge off, get a better idea of what ring she'd like?"

"She'd be able to tell if it were fake," he's sure, stressing his hand through his hair.

"Oh," says Lando. They stare down at the little engagement rings for a minute of quiet, nothing but Ben's breathing loud like he's hyperventilating. Another minute of quiet, and he's staring hard at a ring he think he likes. Another minute, and nonchalantly, Lando clears his throat. "Did your mom figure out her ring's a fake?"

"Oh my -- oh, my God." Ben doesn't know to laugh or cry, what the hell. It's been more than twenty-five fucking _years_ , his dad is such a scammer, his poor mom, "Oh, God, don't tell me that stuff," he mutters, his insides hollow.

"I'm kidding."

"Oh, my God!" The sales people and other customers scowl in their direction, but his life is being _changed_. "You are not!" he half-shouts.

"Well," he placates, oh-so diplomatically, "you couldn't tell either way, could you? The rings are so realistic when well done."

\- -- - -- -

He almost proposes to her a week later when he wakes up on his stomach, Rey starfished ontop of his back.

He thinks he feels her hands in his hair like she's holding his head protectively, but when he twists as best he can, his cheek against the pillow, no surprise, she doesn't wake up to his _good morning_ or his sleepy smile. He can't see her except her hair, her leg splayed out from over his hip. But he can already tell she looks beautiful.

Maybe his heart's as full as hers, fuller 'cause when he says her name, all he gets back is her sleepy groan and her whine of protest.

"Babe," he soothes, reaching for her knee to gently try to tug her off him so he can turn onto his side. She moves easily enough, and even though he's trying to take her back in his arms, she's curling her legs around his and trying to twine them together. She's nuzzling into him like a leech, like a soulmate, and while she just wants to be warm, he's thinking waking up to her sleepy noises and the pillow creases of her arms coming around him everyday for the rest of his life would be great.

He's about to say that or something cool and smooth like _hey, what if you and me got married?_ but then she's stealing his breath. And his words.

He tastes like morning when she kisses him, sloppy and lazy and blessed. The sheets are cold everywhere except him, his eyelashes a brush against her cheeks, the room a shadow and a light from the blinds and a peace here that's slow. And warm.

"We should go shower," she whispers conspiratorially, following the slope of his ribs down with her fingers. "Together," she adds.

And then she kisses down his back, hot water making them so much softer, so slick and hot. He's washed her hair and massaged her cucumber melon body wash over her skin, given up to knead at her breasts. To rub the buds of her nipples with the heel of his other hand steadying her abdomen, enough pressure to make her whine, to feel the way she writhes.

But when she drops to her knees, traces a finger across the length of him, he.. he -- fuck, he twitches in her palm, everything goes white, he's burning red.

"Rey," he chokes. She licks around him slowly and has to steady his thigh with her hand. She uses her nails to mark him, and his fist knocks into the wall, the other hand knots in her hair. She's looking up at him with her wet hair sticking to her face, her eyes shining when she takes him into her mouth slowly, so slowly he groans, uses all his restraint to not thrust roughly into her because oh, _oh_ , the way she feels, her fucking tongue.

Water beats down his back, and she's sucking him into her throat, pulling back to twist her tongue around his tip. His knees start to tremble; everything is thrumming heady and coiling in his stomach, his groan echoing over the tile with her name again and again. Burning through his veins, flooding through him, she's making swallowing motions with her throat that send heat straight through him.

She palms at what she can't suck into her mouth, and he can't breathe, his muscles are pulled taut and he's so tense, _so_ close, she feels so good he -- he actually whines when her lips leave his cock.

"Good?" she whispers.

All he can do is grunt, helpless and so weak for her, this is why they call this a little death, this is what it's like to love, the tenderness in her eyes, the gentle way she smooths her fingertips up his slick skin to calm how his abdomen's quivering.

"I love you," she says, clear in all the steam surrounding them, so soft, so sweet, he's blushing the color of her tongue.

He means to say it back, to tell her to get off her knees so he can kiss her, but she's taking him between her lips again, sucking and tonguing the ridge of his head, and he's lost.

\- -- - -- -

"It was an accident!" she laughs, fucking giggles like this is hilarious.

"I don't even think popcorn's all that great!" he shouts, popcorn flooding the counter, falling onto the floor, going to bury them both because Poe thought they could benefit thousands of dollars by popping their own popcorn. "How much did you put in?!"

"All of it," she cackles, backed away into the opposite corner of the cabinets, feet away from the popcorn that just won't stop.

"It said half a cap!"

"I wasn't listening!"

"Rey," but she's looking like an apology for half a second, her eyes meeting his for an indescribable, breathtaking moment before she starts to laugh again.

Mad, bubbly chortles that spill from her like her brown hair over her convulsing shoulders, the popcorn that's still bursting from the kernels and metamorphosing all over the kitchen counter. "I'll clean it up," she chokes, but he can't really be mad when she's that breathless, when he's laughing, too.

\- -- - -- -

His hand finds her left, the engagement ring, the wedding band she's not wearing. Standing behind her, he rests his chin on the top of her head, and oh, she married him a week ago, tonight's the night they announce their elopement with his parents and hers. Cheap wine and his dad, no, her _father-in-law_ , oh, goodness, barbecuing in the backyard with her dad. Their moms gossiping in the kitchen.

It's just like their first ever conversation the day she'd moved into this life, the day they met.

"See anything you want to steal for us?" he teases quietly.

Reaching with her free hand for the case, she picks out _The Sandlot_. "I don't think I've ever seen this," she tells him, holding it up.

"Jesus. My dad and I would watch that all the time when I was a kid."

"Does that mean we're bringing it home?" She tilts her head, grins when his stubble rasps against her forehead.

"Nope."

"Mmm," she hums. Leia laughs from the kitchen, the back screen door opens, and Ben wraps both his arms around her.

"Do we tell them after they've been drinking a bit?" he whispers as quiet as he can. It's a whisper-shout, and it makes her laugh, and God, there's just something so.. sweet. And satisfying. About being able to call Ben her husband.

It's not like anything has changed except maybe legally her last name and bank accounts, but at the same time, it's being each other's in just another way. It goes beyond laughter and the giddy newlywedded bliss. It's the weight of the wedding vows that are sinking in everyday, the quiet consternation that's him and how he stopped her on the carpet to say he loves her, _I really fucking love you, this is everything I've wanted,_ the cliché of the happiest man in the world, his face when she said it, _I will_.

It's more than sleepy smiles or the days they waste in bed, nights dancing to the light of the refrigerator, holding onto each other 'cause the rest of their lives are just ahead -- it's so much more than that. They're gonna grow old together. They have plans. Things that they want.

When they're all gathered around the table, the food's been dished out, everyone's eating and happy and idle small talk waiting for their announcement. Ben squeezes her hand underneath the table reassuringly, smiles at her so bright when she looks, and.. and God, the moment is right there, but then her mom's quicker.

"This wedding's going to creep up on us sooner than we think," she says from across the table.

Leia's eyes light up like she's been scheming for this moment all her life, fiercely nodding her agreement. She dabs a napkin at her mouth, food forgotten, and Ben pours himself more wine. "Have either of you considered themes, guest lists? We'll have to get notice out as soon as possible."

"And find a florist."

"Yes," Leia gushes. Then they're all looking at Rey expectantly, and oh, no.

"I really like daisies?" she says slowly. "And sunflowers."

Ben balks at her and wordlessly, smiling, she thinks dark thoughts about trying to get out with their news but couldn't.

"Actually," Ben interjects deeply, clearing his throat. "We don't need the flowers."

" _Don't need the flowers_ ," Leia repeats in horror. Actually, just surprise.

"No, he means that --"

"Rey," her mom says sweetly. "Imagine a beautiful garden, hundreds of flowers everywhere. Mixed assortments and vases. Dozens of arrangements." It's like she can see it, the high afternoon sun, the sheer gauze protecting them all from buggies, surrounding them in the aroma of all the flowers.

"Oh, like Eden," gushes Leia, and without missing a beat, Han meets his son's eyes and they both laugh.

"Pick a theme. I'm the snake."

"Oh, my God."

"You can't be God."

"Okay!" Rey's not shouting, she's not, but she has to say it, there's that heavy weight that makes her feel like she's a kid done something wrong, lit a store on fire, killed someone, done drugs, gotten married, and they're all looking at her expectantly now, and the moment's slipping away. She can feel it. How does she even begin to --

Bringing her back, Ben squeezes her thigh, his palm heavy on her knee, and he's looking at the damned potatoes. But he looks like he's offering them all the support he can, nothing but his confidence and his love, and she --

"Are you getting cold feet so soon?" her mom asks sympathetically.

Like a switch, she's actually going to go insane. "That's not it."

"Oh." And Ben's dad looks more relieved than any of them, but then she's interrupted (or not interrupted, but working out how to say _hey, by the way we kinda already got married a week ago_ took too long to put eloquently and earnestly and apologetically considering no one else went with them and there weren't sunflowers or tulle or anything but the holes in his jeans, scuffed Converse, and her favorite sweater, so someone else took control of the conversation) and she's hearing how everyone's so excited to plan this wedding.

They've all waited for this.

They have plans.

They want it to be everything they want.

And so then Ben squeezes her hand under the table, holds so tight it's like it's not just for him. She thinks she understands; her parents think their eye contact now is of lovestruck kids stuck in their own heads, but his smile is a subtle _oh, shit_ , his eyes bright and scared, her face either the joy of a bride-to-be or the panic of making a mistake, oh, no, that happiness on all their faces, they can't lie to that.

Or well, they can, and they're going to, it's what his eyes suggest and she starts to say until he kicks her under the table.

Only less than a year until they're supposed to get married. They can keep it together until then, they totally can.

Then Ben flinches when his mom asks him about work for the third time since he wasn't paying attention.

The first thing he says when he gets in the car is _what the fuck_ , then he's turning to her, looking so horror-struck, "She's gonna disinherit me if I tell her I eloped and she wasn't there. She is," he whispers, slumping on her shoulder dramatically.

"What was that in there! You lost your cool!"

"I did?" Aggravatedly, he huffs, and he's a few side dishes away from a whole picnic, y'know. "We had a plan!"

She starts at that, and nope, she holds up her hand. If he's going to angry-point a finger here, he needs to look in the rearview mirror. " _You_ told me to tell them. You said they liked me more!"

"They do."

"Ben."

"Okay," he winces, "your dad kept talking about seating arrangements and lighting and.. the candles? Pouring sand into vases? What? _What_."

"I don't know," she laughs, dazed and confused and chortling. It was crazy in there, overwhelming and happy and she can _breathe_ now, all this air rushing straight to her lungs and filling her heart.

He knocks his head back into the headrest, raises his shoulders up in a sigh so heavy it's Atlas holding up the world, ambrosia in his sudden smile, Persephone instead of Hades. "My mom and I would, like. Plan my wedding when I was a kid," he admits after a beat, way too quiet in the stillness of tonight. "Probably when I was about five. We were gonna dance the hokey pokey."

She can't help her laugh, so sudden it's chasing away the evening's nerves, but he pouts at her like a kid. He doesn't regret it, deciding that day to be her husband, but maybe selfishly, this is bigger than the both of them.

"Maybe we can try to tell them again," he offers. She watches him curl his hand through his hair in stress like he's done twenty-three times tonight. She counted. His voice gets quiet, though, slightly mischievous if not for the worry he's got. "Or."

"We just have a real wedding for them," she finishes. When he glances at her, she scrunches up her nose. Tries to look more certain.

He's about to say they'll figure it out when there's a knock on the _Falcon's_ window. He has to put the keys in to hand-roll them down, so he does, his dad's face coming into view inch by inch.

"Car trouble?"

"No," Rey answers.

"Yes," says Ben at the same time.

Han looks dubious, concerned, suspicious -- all in a blink. Eventually he just sighs, and like he's said it before, "We don't have to work on her to talk," he affectionately pats the faded paint on the hood. Another second, and he looks far away, farther than the driveway.

"I know, Dad."

"You kids were acting weird in there."

"No," Rey denies, "no weirdness." And Ben's obligated to believe her, but she can't lie to save their lives, to save him from being disinherited, to be convincing. She's grimacing at the windshield, and she makes it so hard to pour the water out of their sinking ship, oh, God.

"We're okay," he says awkwardly, doing his best to smile. He almost tells him then, but something -- he can't. He doesn't. He could, but. Uh. Shit.

Smartly, grinning out one side of his mouth, his dad straightens up. He holds their gazes for an infinite three seconds, then with a breath, that grin Ben inherited contorts to a rugged smirk. "I know," he says.

\- -- - -- -

"Did he mean that, like, he _knows_?"

His voice is muffled somewhere in the bathroom with a mouthful of toothpaste and his toothbrush making him near impossible to understand, but she's always been so good at reading him, hearing what he's thinking with the way he holds his shoulders, his eyes.

She's stretched out on the bed, hugging his pillow to her face. She's waiting for him to come out, and oh, when he does, nothing but his boxers, his wet hair sticking to his face. The chain around his neck, the silver wedding band. Her heart's sticking to the roof of her mouth, everything quiet when he moves around the room, hanging up his jacket, closing one of her textbooks after marking the page with her notes. He sets their alarm, then she's feeling how some of his skin's still wet from the shower. He's still warm.

"Ben," she sighs.

"Or was he just saying it?" He trails his knuckles up her arm, goes ahead and curls his arms around her because she shivers. " _I know_ ," he mocks. She can tell he's frowning into her hair though she can't see or feel the stretch of his jaw, the quirks of his dimples.

"Don't think about it?" she suggests, closing her eyes. All his chest moves when he laughs, and she can feel it through her shirt. The heat of his skin. The comfort of this. The rise and fall of his chest with how they fit, how the world's kinda just them now wrapped up in each other and holding on. "Just sleep," she whispers. She slips her leg between his and presses her palm to his heart, curls herself around him when he splays his hand over her lower back.

And then the world fades out, but with just them, it's okay here where sleep isn't awake and their limbs can't bear to separate.

\- -- - -- -

She's twenty-two.

She's kinda a Taylor Swift song.

It's a big deal.

He's twenty-six, and she.. she doesn't know where he's gone, it's their wedding reception, and so many things happened at once? And the world's kinda spinning, he looked like fight or flight, he looked like he did when he was sixteen and he _couldn't_ , he looked like a rebel and a renegade and the parallel line of railroad tracks that would track how far out of town he got away.

She met his Uncle Lando, except no, not Uncle, _Governor Calrissian_ , she used to write to his people and petition against pollution and nEVER HEARD BACK, but.

And she met his Uncle Luke, too, noticed first how Leia slipped out the kitchen like she sensed it, keys pulling out of the ignition. They embraced in the driveway like it's maybe been years. And perhaps it had been, maybe Ben wasn't the only one who wanted to run.

But maybe then love makes moving targets out of all of them. And there's gotta be something to these family ties, those threads of fate that supposedly bind them all.

It's his parents' house, and skipping the creaky steps on the stairs to look for him, his closed bedroom door is the giveaway, but she.. she honest to God almost knocks.

"Ben?" she says quietly, pushing open the door as quietly as she can. He's sitting on the bed impassively, his tie gone, his hair looking like a mess. She cracks a smile despite herself. "What is it?"

"Nothing," he sulks. He doesn't bother to smile, but he does straighten up when she comes to stand in front of him. The softest sigh leaves him when she stands between his knees, presses both her palms to his face.

"You're lying," she says quietly. Not accusing. Just.. a fact.

He quirks a grin at that, a little self-deprecating, she thinks. "I am."

"Is it too much? Your family?" She can hear them even up here, the laughs, the not angry at all shouts over something or another. Cooking or playing charades, she doesn't know.

"Rey." Tilting his head, he drags his lips over the palm of her hand. It makes her quake a breath, and like the habit they've made for themselves, she draws her fingers up to tangle softly in his hair. He presses his face into her stomach easily, just holds. And be held. And it's so loaded, and he's so close to not saying anything about the way his uncle told him, but "Rey," he hushes out, so soft, so quiet. "You know I was named after some crazy old man?"

"I didn't," she hums. With his brown eyes looking up at her, she trails her nails from his scalp and down his shoulders.

"My mom says he saved her life."

"Did he?"

"My dad says he was insane."

"You're elusive," she remarks, really rather used to it by now, really unsurprised. Here, in this room they both grew up in. "Is he coming to the wedding?"

"No," he frowns. _He's dead_ , he doesn't say, because he doesn't want to have to say sorry, he can't, he _can't_ , they're getting married in a week. She doesn't know sometimes when he's lying when he needs to. He's not really even sure, he's.. it's crushing his chest, and none of it matters. "Rey."

There's weight to it with a meaning that makes him stand. He's towering over her -- she moves her hands to notch over his ribs like gravity, yet his hands on her shoulders treat her like she's a fragility, his thumbs so light over her collarbones.

"You know you've.. you're one of us now. You've got a bigger family, right? Through me."

"I know," she grins, beams so bright for the moody interior of his old bedroom. The happiness in her is enough to make her burst, a laugh so giddy is, like, bursting from her at the hinges, but he looks more solemn than he ever has in his whole goddamned life.

"I mean it," he tells her imploringly.

And it's almost odd, however this is Ben, the way he sweeps her hair over her shoulder over the strap of her dress. So. "I know you do." For true, she's a hostage, they're a package deal, (just a step, fights and small talk and how sometimes he still says it like he's surprised, like she's the only thing grounding him to the present, "You're my best friend," with her picture in his office and how she sees him even with all the lights out, her eyes closed), standing in front of her, saying it.

"I love you. More than anything."

"Anything?" It's easy to tease when her heart's bursting, but something shades over his face, something she hasn't seen in a while.

"I really don't know what I'd do without you," he sighs, admits. It's not the first time he's said so, but those times have been after fights and the resolution that's not resignation at all to stay. Just them. "If you ever left --"

"I'm not," she interrupts. "I'm not going anywhere. You don't have to worry about that."

But somehow, in some way, reassurance spurned desperation with her arms coming around his shoulders. His fingers edging the hem of her dress up.

"We shouldn't here," she whispers, ragged, but she's kissing his neck, sucking the spot over his pulse that makes him gasp. She goes electric when his hips press against hers needily, and then he's sliding his finger along her slit through her panties, hearing her keen, feeling her get wetter and wetter through the cloth.

"You need to be quiet," he warns, his voice thick with the want that's spiking through him. His nerves are on edge, his fucking atoms need to be near her, he's pressing so close, she -- she bites over his shoulder, her tongue wetting the dress shirt.

"Off," she decides then, a whine when he slips his hand away from her to quickly undo all the buttons. More and more of his skin pale and firm in front of her makes her thoughts hazy and warm, all centering him and _now_ and _quick_ , her hands are shaking when she tries to unfasten his belt and unzip his pants.

"Rey," he whispers, his voice cracking because he loves her so much, so frustrated and determined, he brings her hand to his mouth before kissing her fingers, kissing her -- sweeter than the need starting to simmer through her bones and throb between her thighs. "I've got it," he says into her mouth, undoing his belt himself.

The floor creaks when he drops to his knees, and his rough hands gently smoothing up her legs, pushing up her dress until his fingers edge in the lace of her panties to pull them down, she's nearly trembling from the anticipation. The thought of his tongue lapping at her or flicking against her clit is enough to make her groan loud, so when he licks his lips, nudges her legs further apart for him, she knots her hand in his hair to stop him.

"I can't be quiet if you do," she whispers. She's holding up her dress, doing all she can to not grind herself on his face and come apart that way.

His eyes dark, he nods and pulls himself up to his feet. "When we get home," he promises lowly, a deep rumble in his chest. Then he's breathless when she tugs his pants down and wraps her hands around his cock. A twist of her wrist and her thumb tracing the vein on him, he could pour himself into her like sugar or forever now. "Are you ready?"

"Not like -- _oh_." She bites hard at her lip to quiet her cry, her teeth holding it taut, 'cause his palms are hot against her thighs and lifting her weightlessly. She steadies herself on his shoulders, her nails biting into his back so hard, so wet she's not sure if it's his sweat or his blood, his eyes close when she positions herself as best she can to sink down on him.

It's slick, and it's hot, and the _sound_ of his cock pushing inside her, his quiet grunts. She's panting breathlessly into his shoulder, dotting his skin with kisses that are so sweet. He lifts her thighs to raise her up, to fuck her like this so deeply she's feeling it in the spot that has her vision spotting out and her muscles quivering.

"Why -- why," she moans, her face in her shoulder, "do you think I'm leaving you?"

"I don't." He doesn't slow his pace, but clenching at him, his legs go unsteady, his knees weak. He groans so loud from his chest out that they both still, their eyes meeting dark and hungry, combustible, _aching_ , "I think you're going to stay forever. We're gonna have this," he whispers, and she kisses down his cheek, down his neck, his shoulder.

"Yes," is all she can manage, ever, breathy and fading, he's thrusting back into her so slowly she's burning, draping her arms over him and letting him mold their bodies together. She eases her hips back and forth, but he's guiding her motions, stretching in her so slowly that every throb and pulse fills her so well she could cry.

He's starting to tremble, holding her up and standing, but they're so close, skin to skin where they're touching. Pushing into her heat again and again, he could drown in her, the slickness and the warmth, every panting breath she mouths into his neck.

When he hoists her a little higher, the friction of their bodies, oh, God, "Like that," she keens, scraping her teeth over his neck. "Right there," she begs. She squeezes her eyes closed and rolls herself on him, thick and hard between her folds.

"I'm -- I'm not going to last long," he groans. She seizes, and his hips jerk unsteadily, pushing _hard_ in her, hard enough the faster, rougher urgency burns her like fire. She scrabbles her hands on his back, his face, his ears, his hair, draws her lips to his cheek to whine and whisper. _Good_ and _I love you_ , and he loses the fluidity of thrusting into her and starts to snap his hips jerkily against her.

The hot spreads everywhere from her core out, overtaking every part of her senses _so close_ , like this he's buried deep in her and that spot that sparks everything behind her eyes is a tumultuous edge, the peak they're cresting against. His ears are ringing while she moans, as loud as she dares with everyone a floor down and oblivion away, he curses over the hitch in his breath.

Time might sweep and slow, but the bliss feels imminent. Their thighs slapping together, his groans so needy against her skin, _oh_ , she contracts around his cock to keep him buried inside for longer. Urgent and sweet and searing, he's breathless and she's melting, she's gasping and he's going to die if they can't get any closer. Bliss is pulling at them, flushing their skin insatiable and sated.

She doesn't have to hear him say it, "I love you," to feel it reverberates from him to her. It's everywhere, this room they grew up in, the wedding ring around his neck, the silver chain distinct on her tongue when she finds it with her kisses down his throat.

She might not know when precisely their fucking sometimes softened and slowed to making love, constructing it from the ground up, lathering it with kisses and band-aids over lovebites, but it happened like a rush, the feeling of him with her so much more than the throbbing of her sex. He swells in her heart where she's gonna keep him, so soft. His hands and his mouth cover her skin and he said it, _we're gonna have this_ forever, there's nothing else to do but stay since this love is happening with this life. It flows out of them.

It's blinding.

They're so close that maybe they've actually made it; this is it, this is the start of an eternity, maybe, his rugged panting and her shallow breaths. The light streaming in shadowed blues through the dark curtains. The love here that's no more wistful and yearning or _almost_ , it's just here and full and theirs.

Shaking, unsteady, he holds her after, lets her quiver until she can stand or talk or laugh or move, say it back to him, _I love you, I don't know what I'd do without you, you're my best friend._


	4. four

When she's eight, he's thirteen, and God, he's so stupid.

He's looking for the world of him like there's anywhere else he'd rather be in his scuffed grey Converse and his faded KISS t-shirt, his bored expression and the sun too hot on his eyes, but really, she's feeling it, too, and she recognizes it just a little though she does want to be here -- she does, it's just this place is new, and she isn't quite used to it yet. Isn't quite used to having a family since the nice couple that came to the Orphanage introduced themselves to her and said how they always wanted a daughter and hugged her and were nicer to her than the other children ever were.

She loves her new family, she really, _really_ does, it's just a little frightening here in this new town with Mom's old friend and her strange husband and their even stranger son.

This is a nice neighborhood, and here she has her very _own_ room with her very _own_ bathroom her new Dad said she'd be happier with when she grew up a bit, grew up because they were here to stay in this nice neighborhood with her family and her small bag of things and the moving truck Mom complains is two days late already. But without any furniture in their new house, they've gotten to eat Chinese food (which she's never had but loves just maybe more than anything) on the kitchen floor and cereal out of plastic cups because that's all they have.

It's really not much, but to Rey -- well. She thinks she's going to like this. A lot. Her dad said he'd let her drive _in about eight years_ he quickly had to add 'cause Mom was giving him a look she's starting to recognize as something fond and warm before they'd hold hands over the console of their small silver car, and this is really nice.

It's been six months with them since the day she got to leave the orphanage, and well, she thinks with all the smiling pretentiousness of a young girl, that she's never been closer to God 'cause she's prayed a lot for a family to pick her up and want to keep her. Her pilot toy's prayed a lot with her, too.

But meeting new people that genuinely seem to care for her, and so many of them like Mister Han and Miss Leia and the bold boy from a street down that introduced himself as Poe with his friend Finn were a little too much too fast too nervous for her.

All but this boy Ben who looked really distressed and annoyed when his Mom made him introduce himself.

His name is Ben. He sarcastically hopes she likes it here, and his Dad laughs and puts his arm around his shoulders. "We're your neighbors," Mister Han says just in case she missed it, and when she realizes she hasn't been paying much attention to anything but the streets and all the houses and the few people she can see living life (one of them with a dog(!) she's too afraid to ask for just yet, please), she flusters just a bit.

"I'm very happy to meet you," she pipes up politely, and the way her parents smile at her makes her real happy.

Miss Leia asks if she enjoys it here yet along with several other questions, and _yes, strawberry ice cream_ (after her first time trying it last night after she thought the frozenness of it would kill her), _I love school, that'd be great!_ Except when she asks what her favorite color is, she accidentally answers with grey instead of her preferred palette of purple, and Ben finally looks at her with his brown eyes bright like he's just noticed she's there. That any of them are there. That he's outside.

He's so weird.

"Can I go yet?" he asks, loud enough to be heard, quiet enough for her parents to pretend that's not rude and for her dad to smile at Mister Han with a _what can you do?_ look that smiles at the corner of their eyes.

"If you're back for dinner," Leia relents, but it isn't a chore to let him go, and he hugs her before he starts off with Mister Han realizing he'd nicked his sunglasses off of him four seconds too late.

The adults start to talk more grown-up things like.. she doesn't know, milk prices or the possibility of Superman actually being real or something, she isn't listening. Miss Leia invites them over for dinner, though, in a couple hours that fly by super quick 'cause her parents take her with them shopping for things they have yet to get yet, like shower curtains and garbage bags and a package of oatmeal raisin cookies 'cause Dad catches her staring at them and adds them to their cart with an indulgent smile on his face, and then he even lets her choose the color of their bathroom rugs.

She picks bright yellow. Her dad makes a face that scrunches his eyes under his glasses (and it'll take another three more months before she can identify what she or her Mom do to bring that look on and another seven years before every choice she makes as a teenager will bring that same fond, incredulous look back) though he doesn't say anything, and her Mom says that yellow's her favorite color, that they'll look so pretty with the plastered sea shell wallpaper already decorating their bathroom walls, and she'll realize later that yellow isn't her Mom's favorite color at all. It's just the kind of thing she'll realize mothers do or say, and that's really nice, too.

When it's finally time to go back home and next door to the Solo's house, Mister Han is wearing a funny apron that says "Kiss the Cook" that Miss Leia ignores every time he manages to obnoxiously catch her eye, and they're so funny! Mom tells all them stories about when she and Miss Leia were younger and collaged education or something -- a crazy time in their lives that makes Dad scoff and Mister Solo laugh even more than he already seems to do, but the topic changes quick and easy before she can seem to catch up. They're talking about movies next, all the ones she's seen which.. no. She hasn't seen that many, really. Not any.

It's then she sorta indirectly learns her parents aren't really television people, whatever that means, but they encourage her to go look at Mister Han's and Miss Leia's collection of VHS tapes when they offer she can borrow anything she'd like to see. _Nothing rated R_ , he jokes, whatever that is. Miss Leia doesn't laugh.

She's heard of the wonder of Mister Walt Disney, whoever he is, but there's -- there's so many, and making these important decisions? All she's had to choose so far have been which vegetable she'd like them all to eat for dinner or which clothes she'd like to wear that day.

So she's standing and staring at all these movies when the front door opens (a different sound than the sliding back door where everyone else is, she remembers), and it's all of two seconds before he speaks.

"You're the girl?" It's Ben, and when she looks, he's already taken off his shoes and socks and left them not-so-neatly by the door. She frowns, and he thinks it's a little like she's turning her nose up at him, and that makes him laugh.

"My name is Rey," she says stubbornly, confusedly. She didn't even know how to begin to work a VCR, but her dad would probably help her.

"Yeah, the girl," he shrugs, moving across the carpeted living room to the side of the television where the shelf of movies she's browsing are. "What are we looking for?"

"You're Ben, right?"

"We met," he says off-handedly, just a little rudely since he doesn't say her name, she thinks, and he looks startled when she tells him so. "You're annoying."

"You were first," she protests mildly, but he laughs again, asks her what all movies she's seen. "None."

He squats to take a better look at the bottom shelf, to bring himself a bit closer to her height to get a good look at this poor sheltered kid that probably has it way worse than him, but then he sorta just shrugs again. "None," he repeats, like he doesn't believe it. "What do you do, then?"

She really likes the Barbies her Mom bought for her. She likes Ken's red _Corvette_ her dad found on the EBay better, though. "Not much."

"Huh. Well. Start with this," he tells her. He pulls out a movie from the very bottom left corner. _The Wizard of Oz_.

"What's it about it?" she asks him when he hands it to her, her eyes a little too intent on those sparkling red shoes.

"It's about the Wizard of Oz."

"I could have guessed," she huffs, and he rolls his eyes, suddenly all attitude.

"How old are you anyways?" He hands her more titles, all animated it looks like. _The Great Mouse Detective. The Little Mermaid. The Lion King. Braveheart. The Land Before Time._ She thinks he holds that one a little too possessively, a little too long.

"..You can keep that one," she says awkwardly, half-trying to give it back, half-watching the long-necked dinosaur on the cover walk immobilely towards the waterfall. "I'm almost nine."

"No, keep it," he mutters. He glances back to it, though. "I haven't watched in a while, I'd almost forgotten." And while he's acting a little sad about it, he gives her another film. _Jurassic Park._ "That should start you off. Then you watch _Jaws_."

"Isn't that the shark?"

"You seen it?"

She shakes her head. "Heard of it." He doesn't look as impressed. They go quiet, and looks to the pictures on the walls of Mister Han and Miss Leia and Ben and several others, all growing up, all young again. She likes this, too. "Are we gonna be friends?" she asks him, that innocent, hopeful way only children can manage sometimes that's more endearing than annoying.

Or not.

"Nope," he says lightly, and his smile's not much of a smile when he nudges her arm, gets back up on his feet. "Not with you."

And it's the type of refusal she doesn't want to think about, _isn't_ thinking about, strangely, in terms of family and friendship and how much she wants to stay here. She's just thinking he's annoying and a bit stupid and not very nice at all.

So she shoves him, hard, and he doesn't laugh.

Her dad does, though, when the reason Mister Han's had trouble with the charcoal all this time is because it's a gas grill.

\- -- - -- -

When she's about to be eleven, he's already fifteen.

She conned him into taking her to see _Twilight Eclipse_ since when she asked her dad, he regrettably told her teen vampiric romances just weren't for him. He had a reputation to uphold. _Days of our Lives_ was the extent of his miscellaneous romantic drama addiction.

"Pretty sure you could ask one of those boys always following you around," he teased, just like a dad. "Benny has his permit. That Dameron kid has his license, doesn't he?"

It happened when she was helping her mom put groceries away one day. Poe was walking past them before oh-so-chivalrously offering his help and a grin too charming for such an already handsome face; all the girls at school talked about how cute he was, and it made her cheeks turn pink when her dad thanked Poe for helping his women.

And then he proceeded to tell her that a guy like that is one she'll want to marry when she's forty-three or so.

No, thank you.

Except that stuck with her when Ben would always take her bag when he picked her up from school, and oh, God, his eyes were still the brownest she'd ever seen, and sometime in all the annoying days and movie nights with either of their families and late night study sessions when biology was ruining her life and her GPA, she started to maybe kinda like his gangly, dorky smile and his mood swings and the freckles on his face and how he only likes to drink soda at room temperature and knows more lyrics to Taylor Swift songs than he'll admit.

She has it pretty bad.

Ben and Han were arguing in the backyard when she hangs on her side of the fence and interferes between the words _difficult_ and _why_.

"Hey," she calls lightly, unsure if she should be smiling or not.

Mister Han smiles, though, and Ben steps back, rocks back on his heels, flexes his fists. "Hey."

"I need to borrow him," she tells Han, but as much as he looks like he wants his son out of his hair for a bit, he shakes his head.

"Sorry, kid. He's about to be grounded." His hands are tied where Ben's are itching to run and burn, and they both look so done, it's almost funny.

"Not even so he can take me to see _Twilight_?" She grins hopeful and helpful and just looking at Han since his son's glowering at her with his dark eyes and his dark shirt radiating righteous indignation beneath all this sun, his head already shaking _no_ , he's not gonna do that.

Han can't stop laughing. He doubles over and chokes and slaps his knee, his eyes shining. "That's better punishment than I can think of," he guffaws, giving her a trademark Solo smirk.

"You're kidding," Ben huffs, stomping inside and slamming the screen door.

Han gives her an apologetic _what can you do?_ look. "Also, Rey?"

"Yeah?"

"If you could.. talk to him," he blurted, sounding doubtful somehow, "I'd be interested in hearing what he'd say. You two do that talking thing, right?"

"Uh, yes," she answers, more question? Than it should be? "We talk."

"Right."

"Mmhmm."

"We do the talking thing, too," he explains, shielding his eyes from the sun.

"Right."

The _Falcon's_ horn blears loudly from the front, so she awkwardly waves and leaves Mister Han looking confused in the backyard.

Poe's leaning on the dark faded blue of the ancient old car passed down to Ben hesitantly by Han, but Poe -- well, he became a fixture in the Solo house ever since they'd learned his mom had long since passed and his dad was overseas so he was staying with his weird grandma.

He's very Neville Longbottom. Except he's sixteen and almost as cute as Ben, she thinks, and is.. getting into the passenger seat.

"What are you doing?"

"What?" he shrugs, giving her an excited grin. "I wanna know who Bella chooses."

"Read the book," Ben tells him in a grated voice.

Poe laughs because he's used to it, though, because they're bestest friends and Poe makes best friends with everyone because he's that kinda guy, so he turns down the screaming music playing, scoots his seat up so her knees have room when she climbs in the backseat.

"You've read them?" she giggles, so bright it makes Ben put on his black-framed aviators after glaring at her in the rear view mirror.

"Maybe," he frowns, unbudging. When she reaches up, fingers millimeters away from his head, he takes the hint and passes her his sunglasses. "When's this movie start?"

"Half an hour."

"Oh, my God."

"Were you and your dad arguing?"

"Next question, Rey," he snaps.

For a second, she thinks he might be more sad than mad, but it could just be the lens of his sunglasses tricking her eyes. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"That's a nice tree right there," Poe points out tactfully.

"Gardening."

"..What?"

"We started arguing about gardening," he goes on, sneering at the windshield, swerving on the road just a little.

"Easy buddy," Poe cautions.

"You want me to hit that squirrel next time?"

"Wait," she says, because she's missing something obvious surely. "Gardening? Neither of you garden."

"I know."

"Look at that streetlamp."

"Poe --" Ben starts to shake his head, but then he starts to laugh and can't stop. "This better be a good movie."

"It can't be better than _Top Gun_."

"It can't be worse than _Top Gun_ ," she corrects just to make Poe startle all offended.

Ben smirks at her in the mirror, and she feels pretty cool.

And pretty disappointed. Agreeing to marry Edward definitely isn't permission to kiss Jacob. Or cuddle Jacob in a tent in the middle of a snowstorm. Why even agree to marry Edward? Why be young and beautiful forever? Why keep wearing that hideous jacket? Why give up all your morality for a stupid vampire with a history of bias serial killing? Why even the prejudice against the rest of the stupidity in the world?

Those are all the things Ben hissed in her ear during the movie. And he laughed a lot and got bunches of people staring and Poe throwing Twizzlers at him.

It's not 'till a little later that they really get to talk. They drop Poe off at his gram's and laugh when he shouts, "I love you nerds!" at them, continue home to a yellow house and a blue house side by side.

She unbuckles her seatbelt, unconsciously waiting for him to open his door before she does. Maybe she's just used to it with her parents, but when he stays there gripping the wheel tight, _Falcon_ in park, she turns in her seat to face him. "Not ready to go in?"

"No." He shakes his head before leaning against the headrest and looking at her. And because he's still Ben, he smiles like a dopey idiot. "Think he's still mad?"

She doesn't really get it, the arguing-with-parents thing. Maybe when she gets a little older. Maybe it's because she didn't think she'd ever have any, so why fight them? Except Finn never argues with his parents. Oh. "He's probably worried you're still mad."

"He's an idiot sometimes."

"And he probably thinks you are," she smiles only a little timidly. "It's all part of growing up."

"Think it ever goes by too quick?" he says, like he's.. like he's so ready to just _go_ and get out of here, far away from anything that's a picket fence and his too understanding mom and the pressures of everything that's being fifteen and angry and a dark sky that's more scalding than starry.

"I don't know," she answers truthfully. Quietly. She gives him his sunglasses back, and she thanks him for driving her when he didn't really want to. "Life's so hard for you," she teases him, and he reaches over her, opens her door.

"You're walking next time."

"But there's two more movies," she laughs, stepping out when he does. He says a curse she's too scared to repeat, slamming his door closed three times before it latches. "Thanks again."

"Sure, kid."

\- -- - -- -

Grow up, she tells herself in the mirror.

First she stands up taller, then she strikes a pose. She tries not to frown at her reflection, tries not to scrutinize every inch of herself in the mirror.

Her mom says she's becoming a woman, and she can't get it out of her head that Poe said she sprung up like a weed over the summer like that really means anything coming from him and not her older, unfairly adorable crush, so _grow up_ she tells herself, grow up and get older so things are more probable and possible. It isn't fair.

He needs to grow down, _wait_.

\- -- - -- -

"Hey," she says quietly sometime between fourteen and fifteen. They're laying on his bedroom floor since both their parents are gone working or whatever, and well, he's long since stopped pretending to be annoyed when she'd come bother him. Sometimes he hates his parents and all his friends and sometimes her, but not really, never not really, except she sorta hates him. She hates him.

If you're a woman, you understand.

He doesn't look up from where he's working on the English paper he's said is worth more than half his grade and a requirement to graduate, and he's so studious laying there on a pillow, crafting thesises and sentence structure. He has a bad habit of chewing on his pens, of biting his lip when he concentrates, but aside from that, she doesn't know much else.

That's a lie, actually.

She knows everything about him from how he likes to drink his soda when it's warm temperature, how he really, _really_ likes political science but not as much as he thinks he'll like engineering instead of simple mechanic work like his dad. But he helped him repair the _Falcon_ , coincidentally the car he inherited as a gift when he was sixteen, weeks and weeks of years of the effort spent slaving shirtless in the summer heat with Han.

And she's seen Ben shirtless everytime she's closed her eyes since she was eleven, can predict precisely when he'll roll his eyes or laugh genuinely or say something stupid. For three years, he's been her best friend, and for two, she fancied herself in love with him and the freckles on his face and the old music he loves when he isn't pretending to like angsty emo bands. He swears her parents like him more than his own do, and he's weirdly obsessed with always playing the banker in Monopoly, hides cigarettes in his desk drawer, called her for the very first time from a pay phone three towns away because he didn't know _what I'm doing, Rey. I just wanna talk._

She's not sure how she convinced him to come back home -- she's even less sure _he_ even knows -- in the middle of the night before his parents could worry. It was last year, and he wore a lot of guy liner, and his long, pale fingers were cold when he'd rasped his knuckles on her bedroom window.

She opened it after eventually swearing to not because it was _way_ late, because he was so clueless it caused her heart physical pain, but after a mouthed argument and him nearly falling off the thing with the vines he'd climbed and scaled to make it up to her room, she let him in. And tried not to think about _The Lost Boys_ and _Salem's Lot_ since they watched them recently.

He kicked off his all black Converse, left them next to her flip flops. He dropped his patched backpack by her desk. His eyes were so gaunt. He said it was all too much, that he didn't know who else to call.

She tried to stop that from getting to her head (heart). She asked him why he came back, then, he said he didn't know, but she thought it was a lie. She let him have it. And her fluffy pillow even though he looked like an idiot standing there towering over her and awkward and uncomfortable in her very girly, very pink bedroom. It wore her heart a little more down. That, and his love of Chinese food. Beijing beef with rice and four egg rolls. Only one fortune cookie.

"Hey," she says again since he isn't listening. His small TV's so quiet playing _General Hospital_ that she can hear the scratch of his pen guided by his elegant penmanship. "Ben."

He hums noncommittally in response, and when she hits him with her purple painted toes, he doesn't even flinch.

"Ben, hey. Ben."

"I'm thinking about changing my name," he says, not bothering to glance up. Not even when she cackles.

"To what?"

"Don't know," he smirks, the edges of his mouth lifting up cheekily at the corners. "What do you what now?" He says it like a tease, a distracted one, like he's still really not annoyed she had to call him the other night since her parents went on a dinner date and she was starving. So he drove her to McDonald's with none the wiser, and she -- she just blurts it, summons up all the dregs of her bravery to coincide her curiosity.

"Have you ever done it?"

And he accidentally drags his pen across his research essay when his elbow gives out beneath him. " _What_?"

Oh, that instant regret. All the things she can't bring herself to say everyday, so passive in her life, a pretentious spectator wall-flowering her own novella of an existence, but she can ask Ben if he's ever had sex? "Nevermind," she says quickly, turning her red face quickly back to the TV. God, take her now.

"Have I ever _what_?" he repeats, hissing like he just can't believe it. "And you're lucky this isn't the final draft," he just has to add, piling onto her humiliation.

"Forget about it, I said."

"Ever.. killed someone? Seen a more ridiculous soap opera? Done drugs?"

"Why was killing someone your first -- nevermind," she huffs, pulling herself up to sit all cross-legged, all arms crossed awkwardly.

He lets it go for only a few seconds that she can tell since he's so focused on his paper, and she's free to watch while his dark eyebrows crease together and his teeth bite at his bottom lip idly. At least until he looks up to watch her, his pale face unreadable. "Are you really asking about sex?" he asks, and God, he needs to not smirk.

"No. Maybe, yes." She curls her fingers through her hair in a fit, very obviously shuffles her brown mess of two days unwashed waves so she's shielding her reddening face a bit. "What other kind of _it_ would I mean?"

"Who knows," he laughs, and he _really_ laughs like he always used to always, has started to again around her. There's a pinch of nervousness she thinks she recognizes, though, and the tips of his ears are red. "Maybe I have. Have you?"

She shrugs her shoulders half-heartedly, tries really, _really_ hard not to think about his probably pretty and nice girlfriend. Her name starts with an _E_ or something, she tries hard not to listen when he tells Poe about her. "I haven't," she finally says. It isn't some great secret.

"Oh."

" _Oh?_ " she repeats offensively. What was that supposed to mean? She throws her pillow at him. After he screams, he throws it back harder, and he scoffs at the shocked look on her face.

"Nevermind."

"You have to tell me now," she whines, because maybe it could mean something terribly important like all their conversations do to her when she absolutely doesn't think about all of them after they've happened. "You can tell me anything."

"Right," he says. But _almost_ he doesn't. Won't for a couple years now.

She _pffts_ at him. "Your face is all red, y'know."

"So's yours."

"If you can't talk about it without blushing, then I don't think you've really -- stop!" she shrieks, because he's grinning like an idiot and reaching for her ankle and tickling the arch of her foot and she can't breathe.

He's laughing, and she's shrieking trying to kick with her other foot, but when did he get so strong and why is he so relentless? And God, her cheeks are wet and her chest is cracking in all these giggles gasping from her mouth, but then his hands are splayed over her ribs to tickle her sides viscously, and he's leaning over her, and he's _staring_ and suddenly still, and she isn't laughing anymore.

"You ever even been kissed?" he asks her.

His voice is low, inches away from hers. It's.. drawing out something inside her, something that could probably count each of his eyelashes brushing against his skin, wants to brush his hair away from where it's grown out past his mom's given haircut. But before she can breathe, it's all passed and normal again and he's reaching up to his dresser and handing her a bottle of black nail polish.

She snorts, slaps it out of hand, tells him that's a fat chance. He says maybe after he finishes his closing paragraph on the Salem Witch Trials she'll wanna go goth. It's all very distracting from the fact she never said that no, she'd never even been kissed.

\- -- - -- -

When she's still a freshmen and he's still a senior, it's really.. weird. Their strange bunch of friends.

Poe's got a day off from training, Ben sighed and rolled his eyes and complained the entire ride to the first football game of the season to see Finn play. He's looking indifferent like he's dying in the sunlight, but he crosses his left ankle over his knee the _same_ second Han does, and he should really join them at the table for meals instead of just holidays.

"Alright," Leia says loudly so they're all sorta huddling on the center stadium bench, all leaning and bumping each other's shoulders. "Remember that --" She has to stop to snap Han's attention away from glowering at the enemies on the opposite side of the field. "Bring it back, hon. Bring it back. Refocus."

"Leia," he groans, all flustered and emasculated. Until she pats his knee, and it's sweet even when Ben rolls his eyes and Poe makes a face.

"Remember that we, Han, Poe," she continues pointedly with a fixed look, "do not make fun of the other team. _Or_ our team. We don't need a repeat of the band incident."

"The band incident?" Ben asks. He'd gone out with his friends that day.

"It's not my fault."

"Shh, Han."

"It's Poe's fault."

"I didn't know that kid's parents were behind us!" he shouts, holding up his pompoms.

"He was a lousy trombone player anyway," Han grumbles snidely.

"Anyone seen Finn's mom?"

"I see Poe's gran."

"You're joking," he pales.

"Crazy old hag," Ben says the _same_ instant Han calls her a crazy old bat. There's a second where they lock eyes and grin, same bone structure and everything, but then he's going up to look for his friends and a flash of her phone says her mom's minutes away from pulling in.

"So," Leia smiles, gentle with crinkles at the corners of her eyes, "where's this boy you think is cute? Remember I know his name, his hair color. I could probably get Finn's mom to get his social security number, too."

"Yeah," Rey giggles, nervous and short. She points to a boy standing just off the field, one she's never seen before, and the stadium erupts in cheers. Their team's running out. Number 87 waves wildly in their general direction, Finn, and she and Poe and Han and Leia scream and clap and stand up to scream louder.

Poe still knows every word to the cheerleaders' chants, oh, God.

There's a stomp on the bleachers next to her, dark blue Converse, and when Ben bumps into her, he smells like nicotine and popcorn and autumn and holds his drink out to her. "Anyone get knocked out yet?"

"Yeah," she says, except no -- they didn't -- but yeah.

\- -- - -- -

"I suddenly feel too old for this," she tells Finn.

"That's just 'cause people are staring."

"At you."

That makes him laugh. "But you're the one that wanted to come to the mall."

"I need a dress."

"Who asks you to prom on Halloween?" he frowns. A little kid gapes at him from the Chic-Fil-A line when they pass it, so he smiles and waves so adorably in his legit Superman costume. She really wants to know where he got that cape.

"His name is Chad, I think," she shrugs, tugging at the hem of her Wonder Woman blue star-patterned skirt. They're so much cooler than the other sophomores and juniors their age.

"You _think_?"

She waves a hand dismissively. "Be nice."

"She doesn't have a kryptonite, Clark," he mutters, so sassy he's almost Poe, so dorky he's almost Ben.

"I never thought my first couple's costume would be a DC comic," she laughs, taking hold of his arm.

"Please, everyone knows Wonder Woman's in love with Batman," he _pffts_. "Poe offered to dress as Lois Lane for me, but I just had to turn him down."

"Broke his heart, you did."

"He'll get over it. The Airforce has kept him pretty busy."

"Have you talked to him recently?" she means to ask. He's just pulled away by a pretty blonde asking for a picture. They look adorable, and he's as dazzling as Clark Kent ought to have been.

Maybe Lois always knew Clark was Superman all along, just in the sense that he was something special. Not in any particular way, maybe, just that no one was ever as bright as he was in the world or her entire life, even when he was joking with Jimmy and drinking coffee in the morning, his hair all a mess on the days even gods wanted to sleep in. Maybe that made it hurt less when he'd leave? No one else could really measure up to him.

She's an idiot.

Finn high-fives a kid on his way back to her, but then his attention's fully focused again so he can nod. "Still training to pilot the Airforce. I don't see him much, but we talk a lot still. He tries to get me to call him Maverick, but.. hah," he snickers, and they're both a giggling fit in front of Hot Topic.

Then it all happens really quick. Some blond guy in a snapback and skinny jeans has the fucking nerve to tell them that Superman can't be a black guy, that he should really just get out and let Wonder Woman find someone else.

Finn just grins like an idiot, though, so inherently _good_ that it rips at her heart when she tries to pull him away from the jerk and his friends. "Come on," she tries, not wanting to start anything. Not today, not when he's been told the same things by idiots who didn't see reason since his first Superman costume at nine years old. "Let's just go find a dress. Ignore them."

"You better watch out!" he has to call after their shocked faces. "Her boyfriend Batman's patrolling the town tonight!"

She laughs despite herself, finally letting go of his arm since he's walking finally. "Finn, you're something else."

"Yep," he grins all toothy and bright. "Any idea what kind of dress you want?"

"Nothing sparkley," she decides after a minute. "What color's your girl wearing?"

"Pink."

"Oh, goodness."

"I know."

They're browsing the racks in Penny's for either the really hideous ones or the pretty ones that shouldn't intimidate her when she's strapless Wonder Woman right now. Oranges, pinks, mint greens, metallic grays. Too many different lengths, styles -- she really wishes her mom or Leia were here for pep talks and brilliant advice. Not that Finn isn't great, 'cause he is. He just keeps picking out yellow.

There's a dark blue dress she really likes, however, and when she holds it up for his opinion, he pretends to swoon. "Go try it right now."

So she does, and she doesn't know how she's gonna get her styled Wonder Woman hair to look as perfect as the first time, but the dress is a fit, floor length, flaring just a little, tapered at the waist with this pretty floral pattern stitched in silver over the bodice. And it zips on the side! Bonus!

When she steps out, Finn falls dramatically silent. It's one of those movie moments except Batman's standing next to him and they awkwardly stare at each other.

"I wish I was Bruce right now," he finally says, and it -- they all crack up, because that's _Ben_ smiling beneath the Batman mask, and oh, she's gonna kill Finn.

"You're beautiful," he adds, ever so wise, "but you're not gonna be able to dance if the hem touches the floor."

"The hem," Ben mocks, swooshing his black cape for good measure. "You're so pretentious."

"Thank _Teen Scene Magazine_."

"What the fuck."

"She dances like a flamingo."

"I know," Ben chokes, nearly knocking over a rack of gowns.

"Find me dresses," she interjects, grinning at the both of them. They're both so sweet and heroes and Ben -- her cheeks are aching from smiling. He looks really good.

She disappears back into the dressing room to chase away everything Finn said about Batman and Wonder Woman. Finn brings her the frillier at pinkest dress out there as a joke when Ben brings her the shortest black one as a joke, and she tries on both, just doesn't step out of the cramped three-foot room. It's Ben that finds the perfect dress that's _the_ one, though. It's purple and drops just below her knees and twirls really easily which she loves.

It's perfect.

Finn snaps a picture of her on her phone so she can send it to her mom, and he's such a good friend saying she looks exquisite while Ben says she looks really weird.

"Gorgeous," she tries to get him to say. He just stares at her.

It's kinda cool walking out with everyone staring at Superman and Batman and her, but she won't say it.

\- -- - -- -

When she's months away from seventeen, he's twenty-one, and his knuckles are white where his fists are clenching the steering wheel of the _Falcon_ tight.

Anger is making him tense and rigid, all harsh lines in his hoodie that smells faintly of cigarettes, and she called him because she didn't know who else to call, really, though she got his voicemail twice before he finally answered.

"Want me to bail you out of prom?" he asked like he was mocking the very idea of it, which he was, but his thoughts were always so loud, and she could _hear_ him in how quiet she was on her side of the line.

"Yeah," she finally said, "yeah." He pretended not to hear how her voice cracked since this wasn't as magical as she thought it'd be, the moment that would define her high school years and be as fun as taking those pictures in her front yard was. She didn't say what happened over the phone, but he got the gist of it when he pulled up to the old parking lot and honked the horn at her 'cause he's an ass.

He didn't see the sleeve of her pretty purple dress torn until she was opening the passenger side's door and the ceiling lights blinded both of them, and oh, hell, no.

"I'll kill him," he decided then, all warmth from his voice gone to a chill that makes her cross her arms over her chest. "I swear to God I will, Rey. What's his name again?"

"No," she says weakly, and God, if she actually starts crying now, Jesus Christ. Her mom did her make-up for like half an hour. "He didn't tear my dress. Well," she pauses, 'cause technically he did but just to stop her to apologize after she hit him after he'd pushed her a little too roughly when she told him to stop trying to grope her against the lockers. "It wasn't --"

"Don't try to defend him," he snaps at her like she's just the stupidest girl ever. His arms are starting to shake. "That isn't fucking okay. What'd he do? Where the hell was that other friend of yours?"

"Finn? He made the Homecoming Court," she mumbles off-handedly, sniffling just a little.

"Good for him."

"Ben," she starts, only she just doesn't really know what to say. She really should have known better.

"Dammit, Rey," he curses. He takes a sharp breath, hisses through his teeth, tightens his grip on the steering wheel before he hits it and curves them roughly on the shoulder of the road. "Want me to kill him?" He sounds so innocent, so serious, she really can't.

"I already did," she mutters darkly. When he looks to her with half a heartbeat of real worry 'cause he can't afford to bail her out of jail, something in him flashes to pride and her anger softens to something sad and disappointed and really not surprised. She wipes at her nose, and that's when she realizes she's crying. "I punched him, Ben. All I did was punch him."

"Where?" And God damn him, he's actually laughing when he slaps his knee in hysterics like his dad does sometimes. "No, don't cry," he hurries to say 'cause she's choking and sobbing and hiccuping and trying not to laugh, too, just crumbling to melodramatic pieces and actually snorting in giggles she can't help since he's so ridiculous. "Don't cry, sweetheart, don't," he laughs, unbuckling his seatbelt and pulling her close to him in seconds. He tucks her into him, feels her tears hot on his neck, and he could kill the bastard all over again.

She can sense him tense up before she can feel it, the anger taking him over bit by bit so his hug's gone rigid, so she throws her other arm over his shoulders, gets as close as she can in the cramped seats to maybe forget tonight was crap and really not worth it until now since he's warm and sighing and the boy next door she's had memorized since she was twelve, seen everytime she's closed her eyes since she was ten. "Don't be mad," she whispers, like it'll work like a salve.

He's a deep breath, a bite to his _okay_. When he reaches up to touch her hair, it crinkles in all the hairspray keeping it stiff.

"You should have been my date instead," she mumbles when she forces herself to let go, to pull back, to just say it since there's not really any more room for secrets in this beat-up car with her smudged mascara and all his angsty bumperstickers. She flips the visor down to see just how bad her face is ruined and smudged even if she can't see much in the dark, but he -- she turns her head to see him staring.

"There's lipstick on your teeth," he points out, his eyes darker, and oh, she thinks dumbly, shrugging off the disappointment with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders to hide the frailty of her ego, that's why he was staring. "You don't want to go home yet, do you?"

"Not really," she answers quietly, drumming her fingers on the door for something to do, something else to think about.

"You want to go to that diner we go to?" he offers. The greasy one they go to lots after school with milkshakes and the best cheeseburgers and lots of good memories. "I can buy you cheese fries."

She takes another deep breath. "Yeah. Where were you anyways? Bar or garage?"

"Bar," he smiles tightly, one of the two jobs he's working to pay for his classes. Everything he is there that he really isn't, but it's a distraction, and she's just realized she's still half-holding onto his hand.

\- -- - -- -

She turns seventeen. He's still twenty-one.

He's been gone eight days.

He missed her birthday and the party and the six hour Monopoly game at McDonald's with Finn and Poe and his girlfriend, and she -- she's not even that mad.

Rey's not.

It's not like she expected a phonecall. No, definitely not when they talked most everyday. She wasn't disappointed not just for her but for his mom because she wasn't the only one he didn't bother contacting.

It didn't matter anyway. He was probably with his friends or a stupid girl on her _fucking_ birthday, getting drunk or high or angry or less and less worth all the time she spent thinking the world in his brown eyes.

He knocks on her bedroom window tonight, though, just shows back up like he'd never left, and she considers leaving him to freeze out there until he looks really pale and really sorry and she has no choice. She lets him in.

He's awkward at first like he always is, looking like he doesn't belong in here with old stuffed animals and VHS tapes she never got around to returning since DVDs were taking over the world. Maybe he doesn't fit here, and she's ready for a half-decent apology or anything he could say to make it better, so she crosses her arms over her chest as she stands up straighter to look more.. grown. Womanly. All a woman's wrath with a child's temper.

His chest rumbles with the husk of a low laugh that cuts through the air, slices through her, just has her covering her face and wanting to feel properly pathetic away from him, how _mean_ he is since he never even knew, but her hands are fists shoving at his chest angrily, caught like nothing and held by him.

"Stop that," she warns, trying to tug her hands away.

His smirks tells her he probably knows she doesn't mean it, that he hasn't been clueless all these years she thought he was, and she can't even look at him. "I'm sorry I missed it."

"You can't just leave like that."

"Can't I?" he smiles. Really gentle, and he lets her shove at his chest again. "I didn't know it'd make you this upset."

"Of course you didn't."

"I wasn't gone that long."

"Your parents don't think so."

"My parents are used to me being gone." His smile isn't really a smile, but then he outright grins so big he's dopey and fifteen again and kicking his purple Converse next to a complicated looking pair of her shoes. "You should be used to me being gone."

"But you're never -- no," she tells herself, tells him, presses both her hands to her eyes tiredly. "What are you even doing here, Ben?"

"I wanted to say sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

His eyes are harsh and annoyed when she finally looks up, always up, but she sighs because it's half-three AM and his right hand's knuckles are bruised, and God, what did the world ever do to make him so insufferable. He makes a step towards her like it's a precise, calculated accident, says it through his teeth where she feels it under her ribs. "I'm sorry I'm late."

"It could have waited until morning," she just _has_ to point out, her brown eyes still looking at her purple rug.

"Will you just shut up," he laughs too warm to be too annoyed. He doesn't stop her from trying to smack his chest again; he just cups her face with his hands, tilts her chin up to kiss her soft and light and a breath that's stolen everything she wants to twist into forever, and he's kissing her.

And he kisses her.

His fingers are rough against his cheeks, but his lips are so soft, and she -- she's staring at him wide-eyed and gasping when he pulls away, straightens up, drops his hands to her shoulders.

"That wasn't nice," she finally whispers, not if he's going to disappear again or be a jerk about it.

"It wasn't? I mean, I know there wasn't any tongue, but.."

"Go home," she smiles. Her cheeks are aching, and her skin feels so warm under the way he's looking at her.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he promises, and she's burning red, leaning towards him when he brushes his thumb over her cheek.

"Will I?"

"Not through a window," he admits or swears, a flustered hand through his dark hair before he's climbing out and into the darker sky.

\- -- - -- -

"You don't really really hate your parents," she tells him, all wise like she knows everything, the ache to all this empty floorspace.

"What makes you so sure?" There's a bite to his tone, so she takes it all chin and cheek, smacks the left side of his exposed ribs since he's shirtless and dribbling cheese from their pizza onto his chest. " _Ow_."

"Baby," she'd mutters, only just a little condescending. A little captivated. "I know you don't. It'd be terribly insensitive for you to hate your parents when y'know." Not all kids have them. She doesn't say it, but she never has to with Benny. He's just so shot of hearing that from her that he gives her a fixed glare, rolls his eyes and shuts them tight when she pulls herself out of her own chair to straddle his lap. "Your face is red," she teases, nineteen years old and gasping when his hands cover her thighs.

"Don't tempt me," he warns lightly, all gruff for nothing since he's melting where her lips are pressing to the vein on his neck she found a week ago in the backseat of the _Falcon_. Her tongue spreads hot over his pulse point, and he groans from deep in his chest, hears her sharp little intake of breath that flares white heat soldering them together. "Rey," he says when she sears her mouth hot to his, "Rey."

All they've done is kiss since the first time they did at seventeen -- he's stupid but he isn't a complete idiot -- but her hands are raking up and down his back, pulling at his shirt, and he asks before he can help it.

"Anyone ever make you cum, Rey?"

"You did in a dream once," she admits breathlessly, but then -- oh, no, she shouldn't have said that. He looks just as taken aback as she feels when she lifts her head from his neck. "Sorry," she winces apologetically, probably thinking she should be moving away from him, far, far away.

"Hey," and he laughs so light that being embarrassed is too heavy for them. "Don't go. I think about it, too," he confesses lowly, dimples pressing to the edge of his smirk. When he helps her back onto his lap, her thighs on either side of his legs so she can -- she can -- _God_ , she can feel him through their jeans.

Her heart's gone quick against his chest where his arm on her back's pulling her so close to him that both their hearts fit, and she fists her hands in old Poison t-shirt, shifts her hips against him just a bit just to try it.

"Fuck, Rey," he curses, his arm slamming against the table and nearly knocking over his glass of coke.

And well, a kiss isn't a kiss if there isn't any tongue.

He kisses her bare shoulder, tastes the salt on her neck, slips his hand between them to try to still her grinding hips pressing over him desperately. "Can I?" he says in a hollow whisper, ragged, and it's suddenly really impressive she got his shirt off without him realizing it.

"I think so," she mumbles, so sweet and nervous, _yes_. She's all tense under his hand at the waist of her jeans, his fingers over the zipper. "Yes."

When he slips his fingers into how warm-wet she is, he curls them just a bit, nearly comes undone himself when she cries out into his neck.

\- -- - -- -

A few hours later, he drives across town to his parents because she didn't ask him to.

He climbs into his old bedroom window after dodging the backyard sprinklers, thinks maybe he ought to clean the gutters and finally tend to the garden that caused so much strife.

His room is still angsty and fifteen years old, memories of Rey everywhere, and before he steps out, he takes the eye-liner and the smokes stashed away and trashes them. The second step from the top still creaks, and the fifth one from the bottom does now, too, and he suddenly feels guilty. He grew up here and the house got old without him all these years he spent running and resenting and eating in his room.

Oh, God.

He brings a yellow plate from the kitchen into the dining room like he's been doing it for years, never mind how long it's been since he moved out. Same place, right next to his mom, but his dad's standing next to it looking so cavalier and happy.

"We saved you a seat," Han says, and _c'mon, dad, don't be an ass_. He's grinning, though, and he doesn't miss the subtle way his eyes flicker behind him to his mom.

Then he realizes for the first time, probably, that he'd gotten taller than his old man just barely. Maybe an inch or three, not a whole lot, but when he's standing across from him for the first time in he doesn't know how long, it's.. he realizes he has to look down at him instead of on him, and he _has_ been, and it doesn't feel right suddenly. It twists wrongly in his stomach, cuts jaggedly and twists in his chest cavity, and it's all so wrong. Feeling.

"I'm sorry," he tells them, a few years of being an awful son stuck to the roof of his mouth.

They both hug him at once.

\- -- - -- -

When she's twenty, the first time he tells her he loves her is accidentally over the phone.

It isn't like how Poe ended every talk with his parents and then his grandma with an automatic _I love you_ that was programmed into him for years (which is good, all things considered) and passed onto nearly every conversation he had on the phone ever. She remembers being thirteen and hearing him tell her the good news that he'd just enlisted in the military only to go, "Alright, love you, bye," before he cursed at himself. First he was telling the pizza guy that he loved them when he called to order, then he was telling her, then he was telling Han who very dramatically responded with a _love you, too, son_ that made Leia hope it was Ben on the phone.

Hah.

Hahaha.

That's really not very funny.

But before even the pizza guy, it was Ben, and she honest to God remembers hearing him profess his love to someone on the other side of the phone and worrying it was a girlfriend.

But he just.. blurted it out. Like he meant it, not like it was an automatic habit he couldn't shake off like his smoking (though he cut back to only when he's nervous now which makes him even more obvious) or something thoughtlessly added just because. He wasn't even _talking_ to her, it was a message since she'd forgotten to charge her phone again, and that -- dear God, it's been three hours and seventeen -- eighteen -- minutes since then. What must he be thinking?

She's standing there in a blue towel in her old room in her parents' house, toothbrush forgotten in her mouth, her hair already starting to dry without being combed, and she's grinning at nothing, makes his deep voice play again on her phone.

_"So I'm running late 'cause my boss is an ass. I'm sorry, I know, I'll be late for our dinner reservations but I'll still order the white chocolate cake so you can have some even if you decide to order three slices of chocolate cake while you're waiting for me. But remember you don't like white wine since you never do when they decide not to card you. I'll try not to be too late. I'm sorry in case I probably forget to tell you again later. I love you, y'know? I --"_

And that's where he pauses at the twenty-three second line and doesn't speak again for seven. He sounds so flustered, and she can just _see_ him tearing his hand through his hair, cheeks all red, elbow smudging the lines he'd penciled in on his engineering plan thing.

_"I wasn't gonna tell you like that. I'm an idiot. But I love you, probably have for years, and you should probably move in with me legally instead of like all my closet space and free use of my hair products, so --"_

And then it beeps because he's run out of time for his message, and she can see in her mind how horrified and angry at his phone he probably looked, and she plays the message again, curls up to squeal into her pillow like she's a girl again.

\- -- - -- -

So she does legally move in with him, her name on the lease and everything because _fuck, it isn't like it's a pre-nup_ , he said.

Now there's more of her shoes in the closet and all her things in his place in boxes unpacked and fit randomly around the orderly chaos of his. Her toothbrush is next to his in a cute little pink ornate cup she brought, and there are dishes in the cabinets that don't really match, and their pillows are starting to smell more like her than just how intoxicating he smells with the floral aroma of Gain laundry detergent, and it's really nice. Perfect, even.

Whenever her dad really thinks about it, he says things like, "He was always such a good kid," in that weird approving way he's always supported her with. He wasn't really a good kid, but she knows what her dad means, that he's a good man, and her mom gives her this look like she knew it'd be like this all along, and well -- his parents always loved her. They come over for dinner and eat Chinese take-out on their mismatched dishes often enough to drive Ben a little crazy, but it's hilarious.

Except sometimes he forgets to call and some nights she wakes up to him smoking out the window like he wishes he was out there running through the biting air, and it's never really been worse since that one devastating fight that had her worried this was really it.

They argue a lot, sure, about stupid stuff that doesn't mean anything until he kisses his anger into her shoulder and leaves yellow flowers on the nightstand for the days he's being particularly trying and wondering why she's still here, maybe. They're far from perfect, but it feels like they are and will be. At least when she isn't wincing at the memory of the first time they actually had sex.

_"Have you ever done this before?" she asked him when he was leaning over her raggedly, skin all flushed red and burning bright and anxious and --_

_"No," he mumbled, scruffing her chin with his stubble._

_"Loser."_

Until she seriously asked him what to do with her hands.

Oh, God.

Tonight, though, he left in a fit of dark red rage, slammed the door behind him with a force that shook the windowpanes, shuttered her ribs.

She wasn't scared of him; it just hit her all at once that she was terrified of him storming out the door and never bothering to come back. The dish she was washing in the sink broke in her hands.

Eight minutes she stands lethargic in the open kitchen lights waiting for the slot of his key to sound his return, but each drawn out second of nothing makes this tiny house even smaller, even emptier. Her throat makes a cry when she sees his coat thrown over the chair in the living room where he left it with the burgundy scarf her mom knitted for him last Christmas, and because she's a woman, because she's independent, because she learned to quiet that hopeful part of her thirteen year old Rey wondering if he was the one each time he smiled at her with his ridiculous grin, she pushes her arms into his black coat's too long sleeves, hugs it around her and then.. well, it's sorta fabulous, and she really likes the ways it goes to her knees. When she finds Ben, she's gonna try to keep it.

She opens the door ready to search everywhere for him, but the second of her eyes adjusting to the one AM dark shows him sitting on the steps of the porch. His shoulders are straight and broad, and his bare arms look cold around the tight sleeves of his company's polo shirt, and the red end of his cigarette is lighting a quarter of his face, catching in his dark eyes. She slowly plops herself next to him on the creaking wooden steps, hears him draw in a slow breath that warms her just a little.

"You didn't get too far," she says quiet, quieter since the sky is so still and silent and starry.

He shakes his head. "Nope."

She wants to ask if he's done running, if maybe he's just tired, if she's done anything to make him mad. She doesn't, just watches him toss his cigarette and turn to face her, their knees bumping.

"Kiss me," he tells her.

She shakes her head because she knows that tone of voice and the look in his eyes even if she can barely see them. He raises his hand to touch her cheek, so gentle still, so fucking _cold_ , and he's so ridiculous. They both are. "But I'm mad at you," she protests lightly, only half-meaning it. She tilts her cheek in his hand to kiss his rough palm, and it's so easy to lean into him when he opens his arms. "You can't just kiss my anger away."

"Then stop kissing mine," he huffs. As cold as his skin is, his mouth's so warm. He tastes like smoke and temperament and wholesomeness and the rest of her life.

\- -- - -- -

She's twenty-one and spent an hour trying to decide between the blue dress or the green dress or the light grey dress.

Poe's getting married to a woman he works with in the Air Force, a woman he describes as lovely and perfect and beautiful and sweet and rowdy and _everything_ he ever wanted but never found in the pizza guy. Her name's Jessika, and she's such a sweet person, oh, goodness, she instantly loves her and knows they've found true love in each other.

Ben scoffed in his fist when she toasted something similar to them at the rehearsal, but he's the one that's standing up there with Poe on his big day, so the joke's all on him. She has a spot in the first row next to his grandma and Han and Leia and Finn, and all of her men just look _exquisite_ in ties and black coats and coordinating colored pocket handkerchiefs. The day is sunny and beautiful and perfect weather for flying, Jess says, but perfect weather for a wedding, too, because it's perfect and lovely and she's crying and Ben keeps _looking_ at her from where he's standing next to Poe up there during the vows, and she can't help it.

She's thinking about it.

More than she wants a wedding, she wants a marriage to Ben.

When the bride and groom kiss with too much tongue to really be appropriate for a wedding, everyone cheers and Han shouts _so_ loud and everyone laughs when Ben gives his best man speech.

He tells everyone about the time he and Poe had the terrible idea to sneak out one night and head for Vegas since it seemed _brilliant_ until they settled for trying to make it to the nearest bar that was conveniently a gay strip club. And because he's an ass, he keeps talking into the microphone about Poe's obsession with _Top Gun_ and the roadtrip where they decided that if one of them died of starvation, the other just had to die of loneliness 'cause what else are friends for? Sometime after the story about the time Rey got her period in the backseat of Poe's gently used car when they three were going to see _Jaws_ premiere again in theaters, he had everyone laughing about the groom asking her on the phone which brand of tampons she wanted and how heavy her flow was and if the cardboard looking applicators hurt, Ben sorta just stops, and he says that he's always been his best friend. And he's very honored to have met him and given him away to the crazy woman that wanted forever with him.

Everyone awww's. Poe looks like he'll cry for the seventh time. Ben says he should thank him for not telling the story about what could have been a gambling addiction and identity theft. Poe tells him to shut up.

Jess's bouquet hits the back of Ben's head when she tosses it.

She dances with Finn and then Han and then Jess and then Poe, and when Ben interrupts and leans down to her ear, tells her to come with him, she follows with her hand in his to a room in these gardens' main house.

"Are we --" she starts incredulously, because he's locking the door and crossing the room to where she's standing in fancy flip flops and a floral green dress.

"Come with me," he says again. He presses her back against a wall, hears her little whine when he gets hold of her hips, lifts her up so she wraps her legs around him. "Come with me," and he whispers it into her throat, dots his tongue over the smooth skin of her neck and bites.

"I did," she gasps, curling one fist into his hair, steadying the other on his shoulder.

"No," he groans, already so hard against her, she's soaked through her panties, feels all this heat flush her skin and pulse in her veins. " _Cum_ with me," he whispers for emphasis, nipping at her ear.

There's a zip, his fingers pushing the wet cloth of her panties aside, her loud cry when he pushes himself into her, tight and clenching and hot and "Fuck," he curses brokenly, "you feel so good."

He holds her gaze the entire time he's inside her, something raw and loving and primal in how his eyes darken with each slow thrust that gives them one body, a heart pulsing and thudding together. When she comes undone, he watches the colors of her orgasm contort her face beautifully before he spends himself in her.

Her knees are wobbly when he sets her back to her feet, and she pushes his back to the wall, kisses him for a long, long time.

\- -- - -- -

The next time she sees him in a tie, it's months later.

He went to have dinner by himself with his parents. It was supposed to be fine.

She's wearing the ring a nurse found in his coat pocket when she was searching for identification, his blood type, whatever. She doesn't care about it when he's laying in a hospital gown and bloody and pale.

He was in the car with his dad, driving, and maybe he always had a car crash smile to begin with. They started to argue, and when Ben said he was gonna ask Rey to marry him, a car came out of nowhere.

He's unconscious with what they think is just a concussion. Han has glass fragmented in his chest from where the windshield cracked. She and Leia are waiting to hear from anyone that'll tell them how the surgery is going.

She decides she hates hospitals. She really does.

\- -- - -- -

About a week later, they're both home, both perfectly fine except so tired and so sorry.

They skirt around each other timidly and are overly polite to each other, and Leia's just so _done_ with both Han and Ben that she kicks them out.

Her mom baked and brought over a ton of cookies she eats with Leia now, and she's only vaguely worried her apparent future mother-in-law is going to ask her weird questions about her and Ben and their life and future children's educations.

"He hasn't really asked yet," she tells her, pouring more milk in her glass. "He hasn't said anything about the ring either."

"Men in this family aren't romantic," Leia shrugs, too used to it by now. Except the way she's smiling is thoughtful and reminiscent and she doesn't believe herself when she thinks back on Han.

"Ben can be," she almost feels the need to justify, but then there it is -- that look on Leia's face.

She looks torn between curiosity and _better not_ wanting to know, and it's.. it's all Rey can do to not grin like a lovestruck fool. It's so different than she ever thought it'd be.

She stares out the glass door to the backyard like she's seeing years ago, a little more than eleven, and there's so much she thought would be so.. so not like this that it makes her giggle and cackle like a crazy person, just oddly amazed and awed and so damned lucky here in the world that's been set for her.

Leia stands after a minute of smiling at her chortles, leaning down to kiss the crown of her head. "I can't wait 'till you're legally one of us, not just a hostage," she teases. Because she knows everything, too, she's opening the front door when Ben and Han pull up the drive in the _Falcon_.

They're laughing and shoving at each other like kids, but then Han and Leia are kissing on the lawn like teenagers while Ben sorta grimaces, closes the door behind him.

"Where you at?" he calls, following his nose to the smell of cookies in the kitchen and exhaling happily when he catches sight of her at the table. "Hey."

"How'd it go," she wants to know, straightening up higher in her chair so she's hugging his waist and not his groin when he steps into grabbing range.

"He was gonna take me fishing before we decided that was stupid." The corner of his mouth quirks up. "It was pretty good. He also said to warn you having sex in the _Falcon_ is, like. Guaranteed pregnancy."

"Did you tell him it wasn't since he's not a grandpa yet?"

"Yep."

"You -- Ben," she grimaces, scrunching up her face and slapping at his ass. The picture of sexual prowess, he turns red. "Tell me you didn't."

"I don't like to lie to you, sweetheart," he smiles, a moot point since his lies of omission in the name of silence are just as bad, but his face is still in stitches, and his smile is so bright, and it's instinct to curl her fingers through his and follow him up, always up, the stairs to his room. "You know what I always wanted to do in here?"

It takes him a second to carefully tug his shirt up over his head, and then he looks too ridiculous to be seductive all spread out on his twin bed like that.

"Your parents are outside," she says slowly.

"So?" he smirks. And then snorts, shaking his head and scooching against the wall so there's room for her to curl up next to him. "I wanted to ask you something, if now's okay."

The engagement ring on her left hand suddenly feels heavy and purposeful, and she tries to school her face, compose her expression. She's technically already agreed to marry him unspokenly, so this -- fine, just fine. _Perfect_. "Now's okay," she assures him, nestling into his chest and wrapping her leg around both of his.

He pauses a moment to think, to blush a light a shade of pink before he asks, "Have you ever done it?" with such an innocent face of seriousness that she hits him. "I'm sorry! That was mean, I'm sorry," he laughs, letting the warm rumble spread through him and echo into her chest. He pulls her closer to him, rests his chin atop her head. "I was going to ask you about the ring," he confesses after a minute of just holding onto each other.

She opens her eyes, feels her eyelashes dust against his neck tenderly. She tries to breathe, letting herself be soothed by his rhythmic fingertips slipping up the side of her shirt and ghosting featherlight touches into the waning dips of her ribs. "What about it?"

"You like it?" he mumbles, trying to fight his nervousness. He just kisses her forehead again.

"I like you," she grins, can't help it with how happy she feels, how right this is. "Might even love you," she quips like she doesn't tell him at every turn. There's so much of it pouring out of her, and all he does is yawn through his big, dopey grin.

He catches hold of her hand and twines their fingers together tight, tries to balance on the bed the seconds he's standing and she's giggling away so he won't crush her if he falls. He drops to one knee on the bed because really, by now it's about time they do marry each other. "I already know you'll say yes."

"Do you?" she challenges, arching an eyebrow.

He gives her that look she knows all too well, the one that's half-annoyed and half-in-love and both parts right _here_ , right _now_ , and he lifts her left hand, kisses her knuckle just above the lone solitary diamond marking her his in one more way that's a lot more elegant than a necklace of his teeth bitten into her neck or one of his old shirts hanging nearly to her knees.

It's the easiest, freest thing in the world to say yes. So she does. It sounds a lot like forever, tastes a lot like all their life, a laugh in his throat, her palms in his hands.

His brown eyes are closed, and she's drinking him in, every part of his soul she can't touch with her fingers. "How about tomorrow?" she wonders, only partially serious.

"We should elope, shouldn't we?" he grins, and he laughs, and she giggles into his neck, and that's it. There's their life tomorrow.

It's perfect. 


	5. five

He decides that nothing knows loneliness like the interstate.

Nothing.

Not even God.

\- -- - -- -

When he took his first steps, he was already trying to run, grubby fingers holding on tight to his mama's, clinging so fierce she couldn't let him go.

Unpacked boxes surrounding them, her striped toe socks inches away from Han's outstretched legs, scuffed Converse on this stained rug, she's terrified for her baby. Ben's so young, so hopeful and so determined in eyes that are just like hers -- Han _loves_ that -- he's going to walk, it's like he's already decided it. Her baby's gonna move the stars, going to become one, and she's going to cry on the camera perched on their bookshelf stocked with VHS tapes.

"Baby," Han croons, "Ben," he's got his arms stretched out for their son, just as excited as this kid starting to babble and coo back to him.

And Ben _lurches_. Wanting to be in Han's arms has him too much momentum his feet can't control yet, he's stumbling headfirst; her heart seizes while she watches Han's bob in his throat.

He's scooped Ben up before he could fall, tucks him safe into his arms with so much relief, oh, God, "Ben," he whispers, shockstill 'cause this kid is his entire world and he's stuttering the breath he takes before he breaks into tears sometimes. And it breaks his heart. Parenthood has killed him a few hundred times over and it's just the first year -- worriedly, Leia looks panicked and confused like she doesn't know what to do -- parenthood is so much of this, trying to hold onto Ben when it's already time to let go so he can run away.

Except he starts to laugh a loud, childish giggle that fills up this cramped apartment, does them both so in it's ridiculous. He twists his grubby fists into his dad's stained white shirt, unruly dark head of hair thumping into his chest, over his heart, and he is.

He's gonna stay nestled there.

"What do you say, kid, you try again thirty or so years from now so we can stay here," Han sighs, so, _so_ content, he looks at her. His face says this is harder for them than it is for their son, anxiety is crippling him, love is just gushing out of her.

When Ben starts to kick his feet, too constricted in Han's arms, so ready to run that he'll have scrapes on his hands and knees for the next couple years, Leia starts to laugh, too, and that's how this family grows. Pencil marks outlining his growing height in the archway of the kitchen of that old diner, Luke constantly a better parent than both of them, the way Ben frowns seriously around the house so considering, life is so precious.

Grins too much like Han, tugs at his hair the way she does even now, months and months of the best years of her life, and it's all here scattered with toys, socks, boxes and cartons of Chinese take-out, extra blankets since she's so in love with the open window, the way sometimes, sometimes, she can hear Han singing through them when he's singing or showering or anything down from her steps on the landing.

"Come here, Ben," she encourages, reaching out her hands and wiggling her fingers to their most beautiful thing in all the world, his little look of skepticism tucked away with his next smile and the game this is, a free fall of trust into their arms.

Ben's gurgling and happy, but it's Han that's scared to let go now.

\- -- - -- -

"What are you doing?" Ben had asked his Uncle Luke.

And oh, it really grates on his dad that he calls him Han now, has never once addressed Luke and Lando as anything other than Uncle, but that's years and years away.

He's five years old. If he presses onto his toes, he can see over the counter, but this isn't like a bank or a check-out line where he can tug on his mom's hand, shirt, purse, anything so she can pick him up so he can see. This is his Uncle Luke's apartment, his kitchen in cool green colors, strawberry jelly and peanut butter on the counter.

"Making you lunch," Luke answers cheerily. And self-consciously because his nephew makes everything an interrogation with his endless questions. And this kid, he doesn't know if he's more Han or Leia.

"You're doing it wrong," Ben tells him with a sniffle. "Mama doesn't make it like that."

"Like what? It's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I'm gonna cut off the crust, don't worry," Luke smiles, 'cause Leia always does and Ben cried when she left him here for the day. Ben's like a winning and a losing battle in him, but he's family, he's an entire world staring up at him with those big brown eyes and that floppy hair.

"But why are you putting that on it?"

"..The jelly?"

Ben makes a face. "The white stuff."

"Oh," laughs Luke, "my uncle always spread butter under the jelly. Makes it taste better."

"That's gross."

"You could try it --"

"No," Ben whines.

"But it'll taste so --"

"No!" he shouts, looking like all the world's just betrayed him. "Mama doesn't make it that way."

And that's the start of the verbal sparring, the helpless look, the determined one. A stalemate and an ultimatum, Luke squatting down to Ben's eye level and staring. "Your dad told me you were going to ask for egg rolls," he accuses fondly, watching his nephew start to pout.

"I don't wanna eat that," he gestures, up to the peanut butter and butter and jelly tormenting him already. With a dramatic huff of childish woe, he leans forward into Uncle Luke's chest, the third pair of arms that ever held him. "Egg rolls."

"Egg rolls," Luke agrees, tousling Ben's hair lightly. "Get your coat."

\- -- - -- -

Life really is an almost.

It's weird, one of his first memories of Rey is the period he got really into psychological thrillers and horror films to freak her out. 'Cause he's mean.

And he can't remember which house, which living room floor they crashed on surrounded by the popcorn she spilled each time she got scared. A habit she's still got, and she still brings a stuffed animal with her for protection, a blanket to cover her eyes.

They started with _The Village_ and he's only, like, 72% sure he's right when he tries to convince her that those people weren't Amish, that any weird stretch of country nothing with only a run-down church and an ice cream shop isn't axe-murdering isolationism. And it was fine, he saw the ending coming half an hour into the movie. He was cool, he was kinda freaking out, and he doesn't get the red flowers? But okay.

Then they watched _It_.

Martha Kent and fucking John Boy Walton, he'll never not be terrified of that clown, of whatever the hell that author was thinking, Christ, fuck, _why_ , he was only twelve but he vividly remembers waking up to a nightmare near the same instant Rey did. Shadowed on the floor to the static of the TV, everything was quiet for that second that stretched on forever until she started to cry.

After _It_ they watched _The Exorcist_. Then _Amityville Horror_. Then _The Shining_.

"Turn on the lights!" she shouted at him, too scared to even move. But he was _shaking_ , it was still night outside and pitch dark in here, monsters were real. The house was probably haunted. He'd never go into the coat closet again. "Ben!"

"Okay!" he hollered back, steeling himself, thinking thoughts about church. Forget moments of need, people get close to religion when they're scared. But blindly trying to hit the light switch, panic really starting to spazz him out, begging and pleading he finds it. It really shouldn't have been a surprise the room hadn't changed, hadn't been overtaken by demons and clowns and red flowers.

She was staring at him absolutely mortified, her eyes wet, and he knew it then. He ruined her life.

"I don't like you," she whispered at him, panic red at her eyes.

All he could do was laugh. His heart was pounding so heady. "I'm sorry."

"You're so mean."

He watches her rub at her nose. He watches her keep glancing around the living room -- hers now, he remembers -- like she's waiting on terror for something to jump out of the walls. But expecting that scare and waiting for it anyways, that was braver than him sprinting to the light switch, a grown-up, paranoid turn of the make believing the floor was lava.

Oh, the things they're scared of in the dark. (The things he'll be scared to say in the dark. This is recollection, this is an almost.)

"We're gonna watch something happy," he told her surefire, strong. It's what he and Poe did after _The Blair Witch Project_ ruined their lives. "Pick a princess."

Of course, all she did was stare at him from her safety blanket of protection. She wasn't gonna risk danger by going all the three feet to the VHS tapes, so back to reality, he starts to look through the Disney film collection.

That scene in _Snow White_ with the witch making the potion could scare her here. Like seeing Gaston try to kill the Beast or Ursula drown ships or Maleficent curse Princess Aurora could do more harm than good here. No Rasputin or Clayton getting hung. He can't do that to her.

Why is Disney so violent?

"How about _Cinderella_?" he asked her, so resigned even then.

"Yes," was all she said, huddling herself up on the couch. "Are you going to sing?"

And _no_ was all he said, looking at her and knowing she didn't want the light turned off yet.

\- -- - -- -

_"Hey," Han said too loudly, nearly tripping over his feet in an effort to make it to the phone, to not accidentally jar the cord out of its circuit. "Hey! Hey, Leia. Hey, you, uh. You called."_

_"I said I would," she reminded him, so contrite, clutching her phone tight to her ear. From her seat ontop of the tank, she scrunches her toes in the pink toilet cover cozie, trying to pick a shade of blue nail polish. Or a shade or grey. This isn't black and white anymore, oh, God. "I'm back."_

_"Back? Here?"_

_"I said I'd be," she exhales, trying to calm her heart down. She missed his voice. Her ribs are cutting up and splintering. "With Luke."_

_"Oh, yeah?" he asks, so cool, so cool, he's so calm, he's got this as he tears his hand through his hair, stares down to his socks. "How're you doing, kid?"_

_"Han."_

_"No," he laughs. His knees are going so weak. "Don't make that face, Leia."_

_"You can't even see," she smiles, tongue and cheek, she misses him so much, oh,_ help. _"And don't say my name like that."_

_"Oh, my God," he says, reeling when he listens to her stuttering breath. He could just collapse; his words do, a dam breaks and he's flooding out of the months of this. "I love you so much. I do. I hated having you away, Leia, I'm happy you got to spend that time with Luke, but I want you here. Marry me. I want you, like. Here with me. Marry me."_

_And she can't breathe, she's holding the phone so tight, next all he does is laugh like it's nothing. "I'm sorry, princess," he continues like it's nothing. "Forget I said that. Tell me about that trip. How did you like the other ocean? I love you. How's your dad doing? How's Luke?"_

\- -- - -- -

"Are you driving or is your date?"

"Poe is!" he calls to his mom, seventeen, taking the steps two at a time, skipping the creaking ones.

"Oh, my God," groans Han, "get that skinny tie out of my face."

"Dad, you don't --"

"I'm getting my old bow tie."

He tries so hard not to make a face. "It better not be plaid."

"You should run while you can," his mom suggests coyly, wiping her hands on her jeans as she comes out of the kitchen. She knows he won't, though, knows whatever had him matching outfits with his dad all cute as a kid brought back the stained white t-shirts, the holey jeans. Apparently the bow ties, too. "What's the chance of you getting Poe to pose for a picture with you?"

"He will," Ben grimaces, oh-so disgusted at the thought. Who's he kidding, they're gonna at least slow dance once since it's junior-senior prom and for real, they're each other's dates. "You want us to kiss on the porch?"

"I don't think your dad's ready for that. Really, neither of you could get dates?"

And she realizes too late how that sounds, but it makes him laugh as his dad bounds in, starts to tie the tie for him gingerly. "Don't worry. I've decided that if I ever need therapy, I'll leave you out of it," he tells her. "And neither of us really wanted one anyway?" he shrugs. Then fights to stay still while Han straightens out the bow, his eyes sparkling at him glance to glance now, six-foot-one and gangly

After the mess of a year, though, who could blame them? Falling out and getting hit in the face, Poe was a constant and they were buddies 'till death. He quit telling him to stop referring to him as a wingman and his second, his other half to being Ben's own better half -- cradle to grave. So many sunsets and misunderstandings and hugs and it's all worked out.

"We probably won't stay long."

"Be home by next Thursday," his mom says cheerfully, disappearing back into the kitchen to the dinner he can smell. Some kinda casserole. The pan's lined with bacon. He could just stay home --

"Make me proud," Han interrupts, reaching out to straighten the old, time-worn bow tie yet again, nervous like he's the one wearing it. He grins at him like he's looking in a mirror, so light, not weighted at all, and why can't moments feel like these all the time?

"I'll do my best."

"Bring us lots of pictures!"

"Don't get a hotel room!"

"Jesus," he curses as he shuts the front door a little too hard. Either his parents think he's not really going with Poe, or they think he's _going_ with Poe and all that sixties lingo connotes, rainbow ribbons and some matching All-Stars, a stereo held overhead, a kiss that would end in cheers and a beeline to legal gay marriage instead of a shotgun wedding.

Instead of civil unrest, it's Poe honking at him from down the road as he pulls up. He must have washed his car, maybe even vacuumed it out and gotten rid of all the soda stains like he's something to impress, but none of that's important. Poe's the type that'd change his heart if you gave him reason to.

From Rey's open window, he can hear the end of _Pictures of You_ while he waits. And he's so proud -- he really is, it's The Cure tonight 'cause he taught her well. Instead of the opening notes of their _Untitled_ , though, the order on the CD he made a few years back when CDs were a thing, it's The Monkees that play next and he takes it all back. A shadow through the curtain, however, whirring by so quickly she has to be dancing ridiculously, _What else can it mean to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen?_ He really doesn't know.

He's just grinning when Poe unlocks the passenger's door for him.

\- -- - -- -

For true, though, what's a legacy? His dad's hand-me-down jacket, the way Poe's old record about silent sounds and rebels underground has him flying -- God, they live in music, they live in life like they're movies, these aspiring legends onscreen that mean so much. They color everything gold, mahogany, velvet trim and Italian leather and sunlight through lace, these things that got 'em feeling infinite.

Legacies and legends and myths, family expectations and asking, "What exactly are you doing?" 'Cause they're not high school kids anymore. They're not the trial of life and Joan Jett and her Runaways, red like blood in the sunset setting down the farthest they ever got from home.

 _Whatever I want_ , Hux used to say. Then it became _trying_ , and now it's a midnight phone call he didn't pick up until the fifth ring.

"Why you calling me?" he asks. And like time calms all things, his annoyance is more curious.

When he puts on his dad's old jacket, drives forty-two miles to a shiny silver _Volvo_ heading for somewhere probably nice and expensive, kinda abandoned here lost in transit, he slows. He puts his car in park and gives half a second to debate going back home.

He has to be in the garage by six, in class by noon, has to close the bar tonight. And if he summons enough bitterness from the past, grits his teeth, he can still taste the blood in the water.

He gets out of the _Falcon_. The words are going to come to him, they have to, his mom always said the right things to say would make themselves known, but saying _I'm sorry_ is so fucking empty. He can't pretend to sympathize and he can't empathize, and every _Hallmark_ sentiment he knows he'd hear if this was him, it's useless. It'd bite more than that bullet did.

"Get your ass off the road," he says gently, fishing his lighter out of his pocket and holding it out.

Hux looks up at him, eyes, fingers itching to burn. "I quit."

"So did I," Ben sighs, and Hux's hands are clammy when he takes the small bit of silver from him. The light illuminates half of his face -- it's red, it's all red, the burning end of his friend's own cigarette, and this -- God.

He remembers Phas once saying boys that grow up that mean get to redeem themselves like its a right of passage, a justification that's supposed to be excusable.

One day Rey had stuck to him like a shadow, it was Hux that sneered at her but Gwen that spoke up before he could come to her defense like a tin foil knight, _you're cool, kid_ 'cause she'll tell Ben a couple years from now that _I always liked her_.

She always said that mean boys got to grow up to be their own hydra in the patriarchy, paid more and respected and valued and good for their detriment, but girls that grew up mean, oh, they just grew up to be bitches.

And Hux might have broken his nose, but he also wiped up the blood, gave him the ice to set under his eyes. So he sits next to him off the side of the road and takes the cigarette when it's offered. "He hated me," he mumbles, teeth clenched.

This is so much like pulling a tooth, scuffed blue Converse next to $350 shoes, Hux doesn't look at him, but he leans onto his shoulder and wills all the world red. "My dad's dead."

All the things he could say, so, so empty, a chasm's filling up, this has to be what it takes to go under. He doesn't understand how he looks so calm, how Hux doesn't look like he gives a damn. "I know," Ben tells him, exhaling slowly. "I know."

\- -- - -- -

She's sixteen and she's in a prom dress and he could curse the world to hell. He could kill every man in the world to ever walk, he's trying to drive, God, he's trying, never in his life.

Never in his life has he felt this possessive, this mean, and she's -- he's freaking her out.

He breathes in. He breathes out. "Are you okay?" he asks her, and she just laughs like she has no air, tells him to drive. " _Rey_."

"Can I just have your jacket or something?" she mumbles, staring straight at him, straight through him, _you have lipstick on your teeth_ he said like an idiot. He can't pinpoint precisely when she stopped being more to him than just herself.

"Yeah," he says like a curse, "yeah, sweetheart. Can you wait 'till a red light?"

"No." And tentatively, she smiles at the dark glare in his eyes, reaches out again for his arm to soothe him. Why can't he fucking just calm down. "Yes."

"You still hungry?"

Another small crack in how small she's making herself, how timid, and she laughs again, settles into the familiarity of this. Just the two of them against the rest of the world, "Always," she exhales, it's a fighting word, he merges into the left lane. She watches him go tense.

"Maybe you, like. Shouldn't date anymore," he says.

And yeah, she's upset, but she's not _that_ upset. "Why?"

"Because."

And it's, like, a conflicting thing? Depending on which one of them speaks next and what they say, this could become a conversation about sexism, about feminism, about the double standards of males' behaviors and the double-edged sword they debated one day: what's being friendly to a guy that's trying to be nice, what's making a guy feel like a would-be rapist when he's just trying to give a compliment? The world they live in now, Christ.

He just knows she's gonna deliberate plain fries or cheese fries -- she's such a first world problem -- none of this fucking matters. She was so excited for tonight. And all she got for it was some jerk who needs his fingers broken, his face kicked in.

She was crying in his car, she's all dressed up and nowhere to be but with him, and since _I'm sorry_ is so empty and she won't believe him if he tells her she looks beautiful and saying _this time next year, I'll be mostly in love with you_ hasn't happened yet, that'll be an abandoned highway away with The Thompson Twins softening her eyes as she sings, the silence just stretches over them here.

It's familiar. It feels like forgiveness, like perdition, like driving with the windows down, like slamming hard on the brakes and jumping his heart into his lungs 'cause she hasn't let go of his wrist with her fingers.

"Are you okay?" she asks him again, so quiet. So, _so_ quiet,

"Rey." The night flashes ahead of them. Headlights and the stars, her eyes are wide looking at him. So honest.

"Ben," she whispers, "I --"

He slams hard on the brakes. His pockets have stones in them, he's sinking instead of falling. "We're, uh. We're here."

When he gets out of the car, he shrugs out of his jacket, leaving his keys, wallet, cigarettes, and secrets inside. She's grown in it slowly, but instead of looking like a kid in it, lost in the long sleeves, the way the collar lays over her collarbones and frames her neck, well. She doesn't look ridiculous anymore. She looks like his.

"Thanks."

"Always," he quips, nudging her forward to the diner and the bells that jingle when they walk in, the pink and white striped tiles.

\--

"But you know I always want the strawberry," she huffs, reaching, reaching, taking the frosted milkshake glass from his hands with nothing short of determination.

"Then order it yourself," he frowns, nicking three fries from her plate at once and smirking around the bite of them.

"Then you wouldn't get to have chocolate," she reminds him obviously, kicking his shin with her bare foot.

\--

She gets that look on her face that means she's thinking brilliantly.

On the muted green tabletop, _just some fries and a chocolate shake_ became two burgers and six empty glasses between them, red and white striped and shared straws abandoned because Maz enables them. She keeps smiling at them from the counter, utterly ancient, reminiscing twenty-odd years ago and various years 'till now.

Rey doesn't know it, but if she'd walk into the kitchen, he'd see every year of his life marked with his height in the archway.

"You're not gonna ask me to dance," he warns, shutting that idea down before she can get too set on it.

It's either hope, though, or something softer like she's wistful or harder like she's iron will resolution when she takes the rest of his bacon cheeseburger right out of his hand. "It depends on what song you pick," she mumbles with her mouth full.

He pays eighty cents for _Daydream Believer_ to play, and she sighs when she admits she only got to dance twice at prom and once was with Finn.

He doesn't lay their palms over his heart when they dance; she doesn't lay her head on his chest, her eyes softened by the linoleum, the sugar rush gradually making her the kinda hysteric that makes him cackle; they don't even join hands.

He dances like a Solo, like his dad, finger guns pointed all around while she laughs and snorkel dives, disco bops, pushes the grocery cart like this is the seventies. It's when he does the airplane that she _loses_ it, almost collapsing since she's laughing quicker than she can breathe.

"Just like your father," Maz accuses of him when she brings Rey another chocolate milkshake with his strawberry one. She lacks the accustomed annoyance that's having known his dad for thirty-six years, though, and just sounds amused and happy after calling Rey _princess_.

\--

After almost two hours, almost ten o'clock tonight, she cups her chin with her hand and props her elbow on the table. "Tell me something about you I don't know."

The request makes her smile like there is such a thing, like there isn't a part of his soul that doesn't have her fingerprints all over it by now.

"Okay," he groans, thinking. Racking his brain, he cringes so hard he laughs. "Okay. So. I'm, like, seventy-eight percent sure about this, right."

She giggles, covering her mouth with her hand since she's mid-chew. "Seventy-eight percent?"

"Yeah. My dad took my mom to a baseball game, right, and she hated it."

"But she loves baseball," she frowns.

"Now she does. But then she didn't really even like my dad, so that he took her to see a game, just. Nope."

Impatiently, she wriggles her shoulders. "This isn't a happy story."

"Hey," he snaps, no real bite to it. "This is a good story. Pay attention. So my mom didn't really like my dad at that point, but she and the guy in the seat next to her, they hit it off real well, right?"

"..Was _that_ guy Han?" She scrunches up her nose, 'cause calling him by his first name's weird.

"No."

"Who then? Mel Gibson? A Kennedy? One of your dad's friends?"

"No. You're cute," he admonishes, "now shut up. So Mom and this guy, they knew nothing about baseball. They were just so happy to be there, and they hit it off so well that when a break came up in the game --" He pauses for melodramatic effect, but she's just eating this up, shoving cheese fries into her mouth like this is a soap opera.

"What happened?" she encourages, leaning forward.

And these two words, they could change history. "The kiss cam."

Bless her, she actually gasps. "She didn't."

"She did."

"Oh, my God! Ben! Oh, my God!" She's cringing and laughing, shuddering 'cause she isn't sure if it's okay to think this is hilarious, but just wait for it. Like this is too much excitement for her, she breathes heavily and clasps her hand to her heart. "What'd your dad do?"

"Well. First, he didn't believe my mom when she said kissing the guy was like kissing a brother. Or what she thought it'd be like if she had a brother," he emphasizes slowly, looking at her pointedly until it clicks.

"..Oh, no. Ohno. Ben."

"The guy's name was Luke."

"Oh, my God!" she sputters, nearly flailing out of her seat.

"That isn't how it happened!" Maz shouts, all four-foot-ten glory stomping over to them. "They came here after," she tells Rey, practically clucking like a hen while she repins a curl that's escaped her hairspray. "They came here after. I've known his father since he was probably your age, sweet pea."

"Then what happened?" she preens, grinning to Maz. To him.

Her cheekbones haven't properly come in yet. He'll be damned when they do.

"Luke wasn't there," she says. Like a conspiracy, she lowers her voice and glances around, making him snort. "It was Leia, Han, and Lando."

"What!" His elbow slips from the table, knocking his fork off the table. "He never kissed my mom!" Please, please, ple _as_ e.

"You're right," the old woman sniffs. Probably like she used to sniff cocaine in, like. 1974. God. "But he kissed your dad."

"The fuck!" he shouts. "No!"

"Yes," Maz hums, winking at Rey who just starts to cackle, folding herself over sideways and hugging her sides.

"That is brilliant," she whispers, choked.

"Was that -- was that even allowed?"

"Who cared? It was the eighties!"

"Oh, my God."

"But what's that story have to do with you?" Rey asks suddenly, looking at him.

"The night he was conceived," Maz deadpans, hands on her hips.

"Oh, my God! It was not!"

"No, it wasn't, but Rey, sweet pea, let me tell you about _that_ night."

\- -- - -- -

They're dreams they should be having, not heartache like this so soft it's love spun like straw gold into longing.

Sunlight rests in streams on the floor, billowing out the curtains tapering her window, and he can hear the music she's playing a loud crescendo beyond her earbuds, orchestrating the book she's holding above her head, over her eyes.

She sees his shadow and she smiles, tips her head back to see him _so_ tall above where she's laying on the floor. Eighteen, she spreads her book over her stomach to safeguard the page, the cover so worn and faded green he knows it already: _Emma_ , he was there for her Austen phase and her Brad Pitt phase alike. He loved every bit of either. At least until he forgot about the awkward sex scene in _Troy_ , but.

"I'm leaving," he tells her gently, watching her face. He and his dad are going to visit Lando a little ways upstate, just a day, and she asked to see him before and after to know these things about him, the color shirt he's wearing, how he'll smile at her when he comes back. "Can you hear me?"

And she can't; he can still hear the music blaring, but she's smiling so big, all teeth, the light making her eyes not quite brown, not mostly green either. As she scrunches her nose, she holds up both her hands to him with her palms up like an offering. "Hi," she breathes, too loud and so close to his face when he kneels over her.

She's starting to turn pink and reveled, and these are the best parts of his days, her fingers slotted into his, the way she makes him feel full. "I'm going soon," he tells her upside down, watching her brows knit it concentration. She's trying to lip-read because if he'd ask, she just _really_ loves this song and she can read him like a book so why not keep listening to the music -- never mind it's a rude habit she likely picked up from him one year he was an ass.

But she's watching his eyes so intently now, he almost can't breathe. "What about the moon?" she asks him in a daze, after the silence hangs in the air for seconds. Memories. She smiles confusedly then _smug_ when he dips a laugh into her forehead.

And over the music rumbling through her earbuds, he can hear her breath catch when he drags his lips over her skin. "I'll see you later," he says. And sighs so lightly, so content, it's so warm in here.

Lightly, she curves her arm around the back of his neck, and when she says it, "Bye," so light like the faint trace of her nails over his scalp, he realizes she still hadn't heard him. Her eyes are just closed, but she's holding him over her and letting this sink in like sunlight, and she just knows what him leaving feels like in the air, maybe.

Angry footfalls storming off, three cardboard boxes in his car without saying good-bye, his inhibitions sometimes are like a drawn-out farewell. But it's like coming home, too. It's starting to.

So he kisses her lightly. Just a soft sort of nothing that presses his nose into her chin, frees her mouth open, wet.

And maybe it's because she can't hear herself, because positioned like this, this angle of the flat of his tongue hot and full on hers -- she moans. So light, so.. fuck.

She's gonna be the death of him.

"Oh, my God," he says, "Rey, this is a PG rating."

Too loud, she huffs, holds onto his ears with her hands. "Why'd you stop?"

"I have to -- I have to go," he says for the forty-second time, trying to sound patient even if she couldn't hear his annoyance anyways. This is what affection does to him; this is how tenderness soothes like a salve, her smiling up at him like he's the sun instead of his head just blocking it.

The same half-shout, and he's not ready to commit his life to a deaf person if she keeps playing her music so loud. "You're going to see the Governor!"

"My uncle."

"Your dad! Go!" she tells him, lightly shoving his head away since he's blocking the natural light.

And he swears, her music gets louder.

\- -- - -- -

" _God_ ," Rey says, "God." She shakes her head like she can't believe this, any of it, and he's.. he's seen her take off her clothes. He's never really watched her put them on.

"The hell, Ben, I might.. I might eat seven Pop Tarts for breakfast or intentionally not step on cracks in sidewalks, I'm -- I'm wearing underwear that says it's Thursday and it is not, it's not, but _you_." Uncharacteristically, her voice cracks, and it's breaking his heart. But she's dealing with a level of judgment she usually doesn't.

All her defenses are up, and his heart is breaking as she struggles to squeeze into her faded skinny jeans.

"God _dammit_ ," she chokes. She turns away from him to zip them, button them, rearrange herself in her bra.

"Rey," he starts softly, his hands reaching for her. He should do something, anything, apologize, kiss her doubt and her insecurity, beg her to stay, say this isn't how things get resolved, she _misunderstood_ \--

"No."

"Rey." His voice sounds so desperate, so vulnerable and pathetic. He watches her shoulders shake and he can't do anything, his sheets still smell like her and he messed it all up.

"Where's my shirt?" she demands suddenly, vengeful like wrath. In seconds, she's tearing through the blankets, tossing his clothes haphazardly, storming through the door and rummaging through the living room, the kitchen, near the front door for a sign of it. But nothing, and she's stomping back into the room like murder, all her face red. "Ben, I swear to God, where's my shirt?"

"I don't know," he whispers, honestly, regretfully. He can't remember when it came it off, but he didn't think he'd have to savor it. He's been taking her for granted. "You can just wear mine --"

"No!" she erupts. Both her hands fly up defensively before she takes a deep breath to steady herself. "No. I don't need your fucking shirt."

But she's pulling on his hoodie. She wipes her nose with the sleeve. "That's my sweatshirt, Rey."

"You don't get to tell me what I'm doing. You don't get to _say my name_ right now," she grits out, hands shaking, drowned in the long sleeves of his hoodie. And her eyes are almost pure green when she cries. "You've lost the right, and you don't get to care. I might be as naïve as you think I am, so positive all the time that I have to be stupid, right? But you don't get to.. you don't get to say that. You don't get to condescend, you don't get to say that like you -- _God_."

She cries into her hands, covering her nose and her mouth to stop the choking sounds wracking through her, and no, _no_ , "Rey," he's never hurt this bad. He's never hurt her this badly, "Rey, sunshine."

He expects her to slap him, to shove him away when he slowly edges off the bed and inches towards her. She should turn away, should strike him down -- he deserves it, he fucking deserves it, but when he coaxes his hand away from her face, wraps his arms around her, pulls her safe into his bare chest, it stings with how hot her tears are. They burn.

She's messily choking and gasping in his sternum, uncomfortable and hot against his skin, but she's so small in his arms. She's digging her nails into his back, clutching him like he's the one trying to leave instead of her, and oh, how he gets it, why people try to cling to love when it feels like it's fading away.

"Rey," he breathes, "sweetheart, darling," into her hair, his eyes start to burn when she says it, _I'm so stupid_ against his chest like she believes it, she's crumbling into him and his world's falling apart. "You're not, you hear me? You're not. I didn't mean anything by it, Rey, I swear," he tries to assure her, squeezing her so tight he can feel her ribs. He can feel her heartbreak. "I didn't think you'd --"

She interrupts him with a sound that's a scoff, a laugh, a cry. "Didn't think I'd care? We just -- we had sex, Ben."

"I know," he says, his throat tight.

And here's where she goes rigid, here's where she probably starts to fight him. "That doesn't mean nothing. We're making something here," she tells him desperately, sniffling, not looking at him. And it hurts. "And you just fucking _say_ that like you regret this, like I'm a --"

"No," he contradicts. His voice is so hard, yet her laugh isn't a laugh at all.

" _You're just a kid_ ," she mocks him, the words he said minutes ago. Cruelly, her face twists, but he knows the nonchalant way she pretends he isn't getting to her. He's known it for years.

"Rey."

"Don't say my name like that, please."

"Like what?" he begs. He'll drop down to his fucking knees, he'll take it back again and again until he dies, he doesn't know why the hell -- just what exactly is wrong with him. He was so full of affection for her, it was eating his heart from the inside out, and it wasn't supposed to hurt her feelings. It was tender.

She doesn't say anything, just twists her way unpracticed and torturous out of his grip and doesn't let him stop her. "I'm going home," she says. That look on her face, it's like she doesn't feel a damn thing. "See you."

\- -- - -- -

And like. Okay. His life has been the prologue to a story about how he'll die at the hands of his perfect best friend, like sunlight, like breathing, it's effortless, he can't complain, he loves her so much.

But this is when time becomes an issue. This is when five years put them in different places that attest to only one thing: they've got to be together, it's like breathing. Love only happens at the end.

It's just been most of his life, like there's never been a time where she wasn't the best part of his day, waking up to her snoring on the couch, late phone calls when the world got too loud, being able to say "hey, what's that guy in the movie like with the face" and having her instantly know, he's got her like he knows himself.

He knows everything about her and has for years, she tells him about the dreams she has, he knows just when she'll laugh and how loud by what she does with her hands, he knows there's some things she'd been afraid to ask for growing up like a shoe would drop, like one night when she was sixteen, he helped her research the town she was born in a few lonely highways away and he was just her whispered, decided _don't_ away from finishing the search for her, for finding her birth parents.

It's been more than a partner in crime, someone to confide in or turn to in weakness or doubt. How she has to drink tea after particularly exhausting days or she talks in her sleep, how for eleven years, she's never not responded to _are you hungry?_ with an _always_ , she always wore his sunglasses like she could hide her thoughts from him, like she could tamper down her grins, the first time his car stalled on the side of the highway and she laughed, said that one day, the _Falcon_ was going to kill someone.

He knows the parts of her that hope and persevere and believe can doubt, 'cause sometimes they argue until they can't stand to be within five feet of each other but can't leave the car, the room, anywhere ten feet away from them and each other since they're a purpose of a person. Love has never been this abstract concept to her when it's always been a shout for her parents away, his number on speed dial away, her friends away, but he's never held a crying girl in a school bathroom. He's never held a crying girl outside a bar either 'cause love doesn't work out, 'cause some guy just couldn't love a moving target.

He also never fell in love with Poe Dameron, _life's not a movie, kid_ , but that didn't stop Finn from falling and crashing and burning, Poe just never knew, it's really not a fairytale sometimes. It's just real and raw and ugly and feelings get hurt.

Her feelings get hurt.

The first time she kissed him like she meant it, her heart was stuttering in her chest and her hands were balled into fists like she was ready to fight. Maybe she was, but she was so guarded with him, she told him at least twice a week that he needs to be kind, that she really, _really_ likes him just in case he missed it, so he better not hurt her.

It's just that most people never intend to.

It's like, the once he thought he knew enough to drive and 'sides, Poe was with him when he crashed his mom's car and Leia asked him to think about what he done. Han just asked why he didn't take the shitty old _Falcon_ , Uncle Luke told him that his actions now will shape who he's going to be, and those voices of reason, yeah, they helped him grow up, but it's always been Uncle Lando. _I didn't mean to,_ Ben complained to him, _it wasn't me,_ but _son, those are two different excuses._

So he gets it. Some things just sink far enough in your skin that you can't pull the truths out.

She might be scared, but he is, too.

\- -- - -- -

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, in this rough, hushed way.  
  
She laughs. Sleepily, she laughs like she breathes, so quiet and so faint with her teeth a flash, her nose a scrunch. But this time he doesn’t smile, he can’t laugh along with her or exhale in annoyance, he can only stare as she fades in and out.

Falls into sleep like it's love, it's so easy, curling in on herself and looking so peaceful.

She's twenty. She's finally cooled enough that wanting to cuddle isn't so sticky and uncomfortable and the risk of heat stroke; worth it, but her sleepy mumbles as he trails his knuckles up and down her spine, caresses her shoulderblades with his fingertips.

Softly, 'cause _you want it harder, sweetheart?_ he'd whispered into her skin, bitten into her neck. Twisted in the sheets and she'd screamed from coming twice on his tongue, boneless and electric and grinding herself against his face, smearing her wetness all over his chin while he flicked hard at her clit with his mouth.

He'd tenderly explored all her curves, but licking his fingers clean of her, her shaved skin red from the roughness of his beard, the way euphoria glints her eyes green, sometimes you just need a good fuck. Each hard rock of his hips into her had her crying out broken syllables that keened, choking _yes_ until she couldn't breathe, one of her knees over his shoulder bringing him into her so deep and so full that it _burned_ , everything whited out and felt so unbelievably good that she trembled after for minutes.

The marks her nails left on his chest sting like she was trying to carve out his heart, but her open-mouthed kisses to his scorching skin to soothe them, the affectionate way she'd gazed at his face, how she's dreamily sprawled on her stomach now claiming more than half the bed.

She's so beautiful.

"Are you still awake?" he whispers, letting his touch tenderly linger from her back to her sides, the gentle waves of her ribs.

Instead of a ticklish laugh, she snores, so he just watches her. The smooth, rested lines of her face that are still pink. Mindlessly, he's drinking in her every detail until it feels like she's stolen his very breath from him, she's carved out his heart, and she's.. she's it. All his life, it's gonna be this. And he's not just gotten lost in her, she's his home, he's saying it because it's so natural, "Rey, wake up. I love you so much."  
  
But she doesn't stir.

He turns out the light, pulls her against his chest under the covers and breathes her in until he's snoring.

\- -- - -- -

"Oh, my God," she says. "Your sense of right and wrong. Your conviction. Your obsession with Tolstoy. You're so meticulous. Your laugh. Ben."

She's been twenty-one for exactly thirteen days, she's giggling quicker than she can breathe on the sidewalk outside the Chinese place they met Finn at.

He'd just been saying something about a parking meter and something else illegal, and she's -- she's losing it. She's the woman he wants to marry but she's eighteen years old again, too; she can't say she loves him right now since she's laughing too much, she's half-holding onto his hand.

"Jesus, Ben, the way you roll your eyes at me, how you're about to say my name --"

"Rey," he interrupts, laughing because she's going to be the death of him. He has no choice but to open his arms when she presses into him, squeals when he lifts her and wraps her legs around his waist. "Sweetheart, you need to breathe."

"I don't need to," she grins against his cheek, squeezing him so tight she's the most beautiful squid that's ever lived, God, she could suck off his face and he'd ask her to do it again. "We should get ice cream."

\- -- - -- -

He's twenty-five.

He and Poe are sprawled all over the living room.

Because Ben's too tall for the love-seat, his knees are cutting onto the end table, his ankles are hanging off. His mom's favorite frilly throw pillow is under his head, an open box of cereal in his lap with bridal magazines and pamphlets from several caterers all over the city.

Poe's in the large, stuffed chair, upside down on it, feet hanging over the top. When he's not calling venues for estimates, he's asking him about art, themes, if Spider-Man really should be an Avenger since he didn't cut it in the comics.

When Han walks in, he sees his son like he's a kid again with Poe, thirteen years old and practically living out of this house and surviving on nothing but pizza rolls and the brownies he bakes. Never cookies 'cause he burns them, but it warms his heart a little. The cold winter air brought in with him melts when he props his arms on the edge of the love-seat. "What are we talking about, kiddos?"

"Just getting ideas," says Poe, frowning hard. "I'm getting married," he frowns, but before Han can say anything, if he wasn't too comfy to sit up, he wouldn't awkwardly wave his foot in exasperation. "I haven't actually proposed yet. Just. You think my wedding needs a DJ? Do I just play CDs? How do I..?"

"Shhh," soothes Ben like every good MOH. He shucks a handful of _Captain Crunch_ at him. "Remember to breathe."

"Huh," says Han thoughtfully. He hasn't understood half these two's conversations, but well, the three of them in this room, they all know something about pining. They'll all three know about the trials of proposing soon. "I could be the DJ."

"..Of course you could," agrees Poe. He's just too nice.

"What? I'm good with the music. I can get down. I'm hip."

"Prosthetic hip," Ben mutters, shoving cereal into his mouth. Like a good wingman, Poe snort-coughs.

"What?"

"I said aesthetic tips. Those are what we really need," _obviously_ , Ben says only a little sorry. "We need help picking a color scheme."

"But Poe likes orange."

"Poe got his free will evoked."

"But it's my favorite color!" he protests, now taking the energy to sit up in indignation. "At least it _is_ a color. What's your wedding colors gonna be, black and white?"

"Charcoal and slate," corrects Han pretentiously, making a face, air quoting. They've had this color condescension talk before.

"Yeah," mumbles Ben idly. Except no? Everything is going to be yellow? There will be daisies everywhere? Maybe a few accents will be blue?

"Not to, uh. Emasculate you two," Han starts, "but don't the brides usually plan this stuff? Aren't the brides usually aware they're getting married?"

"Not if you smuggle them to the altar."

" _eBay_ might be the next new _eHarmony_ when it comes to match-making," Poe adds just as quick.

"Mail order brides?"

"Christ." Han winces.

"Jess will want to know I'm contributing and I won't have the time in a couple months," Poe explains, arranging himself around the throw pillows so the backs of his knees are supported. "I think I found a main course, by the way."

"Let me see," Ben says, grabby fingers and Poe stretching as far as he can to hand the paper to him. "Grilled chicken," he reads. Absently, he wonders how realistic a Chinese buffet could be. Scanning the list, though, appetizers and sides and the like, he shakes his head. "Can't do it. You don't like bell pepper, remember?"

A whole beat of silence passes before the realization hits. "Oh, yeah," Poe remembers like he actually could have forgotten. He lets his leg fall to the right, the side of his ankle nudging Ben's foot fondly. "You're right," he grins.

"Chicken sounds safe, though, who doesn't like chicken?"

"Remember that wedding with the quail?"

"I try not to."

"Right." Awkwardly, Han decides to just leave them to it, these two kids that grew up. "I can get you the number of a florist before I pretend I never saw you here."

"I would appreciate that, sir," Poe says to him genuinely, and _that's_ why parents love him. Scout's honor, 'till the death, _we'll always be friends_ , Ben didn't hesitate leaving work when Poe called and said he needed him.

"I'm sure we can find a flower arrangement that will go with your complexion."

\- -- - -- -

"Babe," he says.

"I'll just be a minute," she assures him, taking the steps two at a time, skipping the creaky second to last stair. "Like, thirty seconds."

"Yeah, but --"

"Whoa! Ben! Let go of the door!"

"Lower your voice," he whisper shouts. His wince is all the apology she gets as he shoves her the rest of the way into the bathroom, catching her by her forearm before she can stumble on the dark blue rug. Instead of meeting her angry eyes, though, he just locks the door and stares at her like he can convey the pitch darkness of his soul into her and her yellow sweatshirt. "What's the plan?"

She blinks at him. Like he's the demented one standing here in the main bathroom. He's seconds away from stuffing towels under the door to muffle any sound, but hey, desperate times. "I'm really only going to be a minute," she explains slowly. "You didn't have to follow me."

"But when you said you were going to the bathroom," he frowns. In a fit, he rakes his fingers through his hair. "That meant to meet and plan an escape."

"Wait, what?" Ridiculously, she laughs. Her nose scrunches at him all cute, like he's an idiot but she's married to him anyway, and this is going to be it. Forever. "When's it ever meant that? It meant I really had to pee. It meant you didn't tell me your water bottle was full of vodka and you told me to _calm down_ ," she mocks, a fair enough impression of him if he's being honest. He bites his grin so he doesn't indulge her smirk, but c'mon, she's wasting time, she needs to hurry up lifting her dress, getting on the toilet. "Why do we need to leave?"

"Goes without saying," he mumbles, leaning against the counter. "Too much of my family's here."

"Poor baby," she snarks, rolling her eyes at him as she pees. "I love your family. Especially your uncle. Can you deal for, like. An hour?"

"Only if we can stay in here."

"What would our reason for leaving even be?"

"You worked late, you're tired; you have to go to work early in the morning; you have to go home to study, that exam you have tomorrow," he lists easily. "You know only three of the seven ways to get out of this house, remember that."

"We're adults, baby. We get to walk out the front door now."

"Yeah," he sighs. He shuffles down the counter as she wipes and flushes so he isn't blocking the sink from her. "They all love you, y'know."

"I do know." She grins, full-tilt, beaming at their reflections in the frosted mirror. She hip-checks him in her reach for the gray hand towel, and then like gravity, like it's nothing at all, she leans herself into his chest and sighs into his peer pressured football jersey. "You have to stay 'till I'm done decorating the tree with my mom," she mumbles over his heart, pressing her palms flat to his back.

"Last Thanksgiving it took you four and a half hours," he complains, sliding his hands up her sides and curving her body to his.

"We won't watch _Gone With the Wind_ this time while we do it," she promises, stretching up to her toes so quick, her kiss to his neck is just a scrape of her teeth over his throat with a hot-wet spot left by her tongue. "Two hours, then you can come get me."

"What do I do for two hours?" he huffs, petulant, but he smirks at her eyes in the mirror when she glowers at him.

"You go chill with your family."

" _Chill_ ," he mocks lightly.

"Ben."

"All I'm saying," he starts, nonchalant like he doesn't have an agenda, like he hasn't been and won't keep overthinking this 'cause he just crumbles, he's gonna have to spend two hours with both their dads 'cause her mom made a tradition out of mom and daughter tree decorating on Thanksgiving, and he. He wonders. "If --" but that sounds so unsure. That's never been how he's felt about her.

"If?" she repeats, fluffing her hair in the mirror.

"When."

"When what?" She smiles, and his mouth is dry.

Watching the side of her face, the lines of her cheekbones and the tilt of her smile, he just free falls. He says it 'cause how can he not, they're having a future, love spirals out of his heart and invades his bloodstream. "When we have a daughter," he says. And so imperceptibly, he can see her breathing shift. Her cheeks tinge red. "Will you do the tree decorating on Thanksgiving, too?"

God, his heart's in his throat. He feels like he did the first time he said _we_ inclusively, becoming hers, tying them together as more than just a package deal. Venturing a future and plans, things they'll both want.

"You'll have to help," she says quietly. Like it costs her everything, she breathes deeply at her reflection and starts to just barely grin. "Yeah. You're gonna have to help us."

\- -- - -- -

When she's still twenty-three and she's still his, he's twenty-seven, and like. Nothing's better than being married.

Everyday just gets better, and responsibilities be damned, every day starts and ends with her and the closeness that's hollowed into his heart.

"But what were you thinking, Ben?" Han wonders aloud, a hand pressed to his head 'cause he just can't believe it.

All Ben did was grimace while his dad worked himself through the stages of panic: **denial** with _you couldn't have,_ he'd gaped, _you seriously wouldn't, we raised you better than that, just think of your mother and -- oh, my God!_ with the **surprise** because _this is great! You actually did it! I know she's good for you, but Ben, I was so worried, I was an idiot when it came to marrying your mom, I mean, I asked her to marry me every day for seven months, but this -- wait. Wait,_ because **suspicion** and _wait, you're not trying to hide anything, are you? You didn't elope because you need to? For, like, your tax returns or something?_ And then **joy** since _oh, Ben, you married her, this is fantastic! You love each other so much! I can't believe you did it, I'm so happy for both of you, oh -- oh, no,_ stage five: **outrage**.

"Your mother's going to kill you! Why'd you cheat her out of a wedding? She's going to blame me!"

"You?!" Ben shouts in disbelief. "This isn't about you! Don't -- ow! Don't hit me with a newspaper!"

"You couldn't even have us as witnesses? You didn't think we'd want to be there? I can't believe you eloped!"

"Neither can I!" Ben yells, smacking his hands on the table. But it all stops when God, he starts to smile, he can't help it, happiness is splitting his face in half, it's grinning around his dad's eyes.

"You got married," he says, exhaling like relief, like what the hell, _it's about time._

"I did. I love her so much, Dad."

"I know you do," he grins, carding his hand through his hair.

"We were gonna tell you guys that night at dinner, but Rey's mom was just --"

"Crazy."

"Crazy! Yes! And she's great, but I don't think Rey wants a spectacle?"

"She wants a small ceremony with just you two at city hall, probably --" And Han laughs ridiculously he can see it, he raised such a good kid. "Probably McDonald's on the way, The Four Seasons playing --"

" _Can't Take My Eyes Off You_ ," Ben finishes, nodding with an awkward sort of laughing grimace, it was so perfect.

Han slaps his knee. "I knew it. So you're just going to pretend you didn't? Have an actual ceremony in a few months?" he wonders, leaning back in his chair.

"Yeah," Ben sighs. This is such a strange relief. "I was actually hoping you'd help with all the paperwork and stuff, her legal name change and stuff and another marriage license 'cause Mom made that sound like getting it was a spectacle and I don't really.. I could just Google it," he frowns, suddenly awkward. "I just --"

Han just keeps looking at him, time softened. "You know you've got me, Ben," he tells him, smiling kinda at nothing. Nothing at all, just blood thicker than grease, thicker than engine oil.

"I know," he answers. And he means it. More than anything. "So," because they're both going to like, cry, "How'd you know we already got married?"

"Son," Han snarks, picking up his coffee. "How _wouldn't_ I know?"

\- -- - -- -

He's twenty-eight.

A nurse gave him Rey's wedding ring and the necklace she's had since she was fifteen, he has her purse, her bloodied clothes in a plastic bag, daisies by her bedside like she had when they got married.

Her wrist is wrapped, her right side's ribs are broken, there's a laceration on the side of her face that cuts under her hairline, but the doctor doesn't think it's trauma, not the cut-off-a-piece-of-her-skull-due-to-her-brain-swelling trauma, not the trauma where she wakes up and doesn't know who she is. Just she's unconscious. And she's already starting to bruise.

And he's got his head in his hands listening to the IV drip, to her breaths sounding way too quiet when she's supposed to be snoring and home right now, she's supposed to be in bed, he -- he thought she was waking him up for sex but she wanted ice cream and she was driving and they just -- they spun, and time goes so fast, it literally never slows, you blink and you miss it, you drive off the road and you're in a hospital bed.

"I was so scared she might be pregnant," he told his mom when she brought him a cup of coffee. The styrofoam was hot to touch but his hands were shaking, and he didn't watch her face to see the hope that was panic that was grief, she smoothed his hair back like she would when he was a kid, and she sighed when his dad asked.

"Were you driving?"

Because most of what Han says gets misinterpreted, he's dead weight instead of brimming concern, "No," he chokes, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes and squeezing. "No, she was, but it doesn't matter, it --"

 _One day, the_ Falcon's _gonna_ _kill somebody._

\- -- - -- -

They love.

The closest he's got to explaining it, to how she says his name and he just knows, love beats his heart and warms everything she touches, there's not a part of his soul her handprints don't have covered. It's him and it's her and that's it, that's the explanation that's bound them together like fate. Like divine intervention, happenstance, predestination, or chance, her laugh and he's undone, her smile still makes his knees weak.

There's responsibilities in the morning but ease because it's all figured out, they're buried under extra blankets 'cause she wants the window open, there's a towel laid down to soak up the rain.

He wants to say her name over and over again even 'till she's stolen every breath from his body, his ribs are aching his heart is so full, there's so much love when this has always seemed so far away, so unlikely but so earnest. He closes his eyes and he inhales her shampoo, her wet hair sticking to his neck as soft as it'd been when he washed it since the tenderness and the spontaneity, the routine -- none of it's time-worn.

None of it's as exhausted as the sweetness of her sigh and the laziness in how she twists her fingers to curl with his, his hand pulled up by hers so she's kissing his palm, the underside of his wrist.

"How many houses do we have to look at tomorrow?" she whispers, so quiet over the rain ontop of the roof.

"Three."

Peaceful silence blanketing over them, she rolls away from him and onto her back, taking his arm with her to guide his palm down her neck, over her breasts, against the slight swell of her belly. Just the barest roundness to her stomach that marks five weeks since she peed on the stick that changed their lives, so much more love now that it's not just him and her, it's three people now in something more. This is still the prologue of a story about how he's gonna die by his best friend's beautiful hands, his ribs are cracked open and she's peeling back his lungs, his heart starts so quick in his chest when she guides his hand lower.

"It's already late," she mumbles, half a question and just the truth, they're wasted on each other like youth's wasted on the young, but he watches her bite her lip when he spreads her with his fingers.

Her breath hitches and their bodies are coming alive --pliable and warm she spreads herself over him, straddling his sides, and the stretch of her around his fingers, he groans with her hiss. She says his name until there's nothing else but the feel of them together, the rain drifting in and life stretching on.

Their mouths meet as she sinks onto him like the world erupts into heat and eternity, it's happening, it's happening, she braces her hands on his thighs so their hips meld together so slowly, soldering hot, scorching in the heat of their sex so they burn red and sated.

"You're my favorite person," he whispers to her, stroking his hands over her thighs, up her backside, feeling all the curves that fit to him so perfectly.

"Oh," she laughs, so breathy and so strained, " _Ben_ , keep talking dirty," as she clenches, the tight heat enough to blot out everything else.

Love is just gushing out of him, it's filling them up, _love, I don't know what I'd do without you, this is perfect, you are everything to me, this rain is sunlight_ , their eyes lock and the world's adrift, he's not lost in her. He's home.

She slams down on him, _hard_ , and dirty talk, God, he's awful at it, he can't even breathe. "Your breasts," he stammers, he's burning alive when she clenches, his eyes darken. "They're hot."


	6. six

Snippets of life, one day Luke holds Leia's hair back while she throws up on the side of the road. The inexplicable fucking _need_ for potato salad was a half gallon-sized container gorged on in the passenger's seat 'cause she couldn't wait to get home, but it's having more family that's blood flowing through their veins, through her placenta, in the lives they touch and hold onto here. So it's worth it.

This proof so sure she can practically see the look on Han's face when she'll tell him. They're not letting this go.

One day before that, a young man who's so quick to grin strolls down a street he doesn't quite belong on. With his hands in his pockets, he looks so out of place and unsure and weighted down, and something more, maybe, but then the young woman he's with laughs. And it's like.

He looks like if angels were real, this is destiny, he links his arm through hers like a gentlemen and guides them away from the Boulevard and towards the dodgier end of the city where they stop at a shop for freshly baked bread and cheese and a pear. _You're beautiful_ , he thinks, but she's telling him about pacifism, about activism and the WRI and vows to renounce the war, and these are the moments they've got: long discussions, stopping their debate just long enough to kiss, the necklace he made for her never not her heart in her throat.

One day God decides to wake up a little later since where the sun is rising, everything is yellow is this pleasant heat, the birds sing just loud enough that it's easy to wake up feeling content when the clouds are gray to those who want them to be in over-romanticization -- coffee steaming against rain hitting the windows like it's magic, sunlight falling through the curtains just right so all the world's at peace.

These days happiness doesn't have to be explained or justified even if a face is set neutrally instead of grinning, it's just.. just.

Maybe Hades felt this way when winter finally came? One day, he gave Persephone a pomegranate that tasted as sweet as a blood orange when she bit into it. Simple fruits have a way of being better than fancy dinners of ambrosia, don't they?

One day there was a witch who wanted more, a woman called Eve, and hey, if Jesus can be romanticized with his easy smiles, his large, callused carpenter's hands divine and rough, his muscles defined from all that walking across the nations, then like. You don't think that serpent taking a human form would have been hella fine? Like, super fine?

One day two kids in college shake hands, unknowing that one day they'll kiss at an altar, hug a lost little girl that was never lost at all, just abandoned.

One day that girl learns the difference, but then back when once upon 1958, well, even now love doesn't always wait to happen 'till the end.

"I'm going to tell him," Finn says like he's burning bright, like he's.. oh, gosh, she just doesn't know, as much as he is, he's never been a coward, but how does anyone dare to venture a _we_ for the first time?

How would Hector do anything but protect Paris when he had crawled to him on his hands and knees and hugged his older brother's leg in a way so reminiscently, incandescently a glimpse of the childhood they grew out of, but not really. How do you let those feelings go?

How do you let all your feelings unearth, how did Mr. Darcy stand there in the rain against his head's every inclination, pride forsaken to the fault of vanity, to the earnest hallows of truth in a declaration so vulnerable -- how is anyone that brave? Air was rushing out of his lungs, and he might never let himself feel anything so momentous ever again if this is the cost, if the possibility of a _maybe_ is the loss, _forgive me, madam, for taking so much of your time._

Why couldn't Daisy pick up the phone? Meredith is in front of Derek saying _pick me, choose me, love me,_ she's finally making a decision, season after season, same rhyme, same reason, to actually know what you want, to damn the rest to hell. Vivian rescues Edward right back, Rhett Butler, he frankly gave a damn the entire time. He cared so much he tore the Union in half, he burnt himself up instead of the Confederacy.

It's just Rose could have saved herself, Claire didn't really have to wait on Henry all that time, Baby could have taken herself out of that corner, too.

Finn and Poe, they're --

It's Seamus and Dean dancing together at the Yule Ball, hands tight together, laughter warm in each other's ears churning in their stomachs, singing all the wrong lyrics to the Sisters, shouting to be heard, _this is the night everything changes!_ And they're holding on so tight.

"I'm going to tell him," Finn says again, _just breathe, calm down, you can do this, you can --_

Love is love, and just now it aches just as much as it restarts the world anew. Mountains are being raised, this is the moment somebody's life is about to change, Frederic-without-a- _K_ is leaving the Pirates, he's meeting Mabel, he's never lived 'till now.

"Okay," she whispers, "okay."

She's fourteen.

Inevitably, she catches his eyes, tries to surge all her hopeful belief into them. He can do this. He isn't a coward but he looks doubtful, he looks like she imagines Eponine would as she resignedly tried not to look at Marius, he looks like Mulder gazed at Scully when she wasn't looking, when he just wanted to believe she noticed since she was all about the facts and the evidence and he was standing right in front of her. Right in front of her.

And she never knew.

This is why Troy fell, except not really. This is why she isn't Molly Ringwald in _Pretty In Pink_ , she's more Duckie.

"What do you think he'll say?" he asks her breathlessly, hope starting to make him excited already and want to say _we_. Years of the Poe Dameron Effect, he's no longer nerves riveting him cautious, he's every memory of late night secrets, of Poe's smiles making him feel larger than life. Falling asleep together on beds, couches, living life so lightly with each other in everything, it's.. it's one thing to have a crush on an unfairly attractive best friend. It's another to feel it like love bottoming out his stomach, to _my knees shake with blind affection for you,_ never was there a truer love than Buttercup and Westley.

His grin is so wide when she says it, "He's going to say the right thing," she just knows it, he has to, emotion this strong, it works out. Joey and Dawson, what will it be? _Yes_ or _sorry_? Lucas and Peyton? Kim and Ron? "You'll say it," and oh, one day, this moment, this is going to be hers, she'll tell be able to tell Ben that it's him, it's always been him, this hope in her chest, she can't even breathe, "Finn, the moment's gonna be right there."

Dermot Mulroney is telling Julia Roberts that when you love someone, you say it. Or the moment passes you by.

And it'll pass them by.

Like an almost, it's a maybe, hours later when she answers her phone and hears Finn say _hi_ , she knows he's smiling 'cause when isn't he. _"So,"_ he tells her.

This kinda feels like it makes or breaks everything. Love. Before Vivian rescues Edward, she asks her friend, "Who does it really work out for?"

Holding her breath, ready to scream, ready to go buy Finn some ice cream, ready to run with him all the way to California and back here 'cause it took Forrest a few years, too, she waits.

 _"I didn't tell him, Rey. I couldn't,"_ he's finally saying. His breaths so rushed like he's choking, she feels like she's going to cry, his heart is just so big. It should be happy for once.

And she nearly asks why except she thinks she knows. If she stares too long and too hard at Ben, he either frowns at her gazing or grins at her, and it's -- it's too bright, he's too bright, he hurts her eyes, he makes her chest hurts where she can feel him kept away. But all that staring, seeing him as a person, glimpses of who he's going to be in certain lights where it can be once upon the rest of her life, she knows Finn feels the same for Poe. She doesn't need to ask him why.

"There's always tomorrow," she offers. It makes her finally crack a smile against her sore jaw since he laughs like he's anxious.

Then hysteric. _"I was going to say it. I was going to tell him, but then he was staring at me. Inches away from my face, Rey, and I couldn't. I couldn't change everything like that. It'd be different."_

She hears how his voice is shaking, how his hands probably are, too. And at once, she thinks she understands a little more of the world. "But Finn, that was the point."

When he's on his way over so they can pretend they're not silly lovestruck teenagers without a clue, she considers taking the cereal bowl from two days ago down to the kitchen, but.

Mindlessly, deliberately, she's pulling up Ben's contact on her phone and waits. The second ring, and "Do you ever regret not saying something you wanted to?" she asks him as a way of greeting. They haven't properly said _hello_ in years. The familiarity tightens her heart. It has to mean something.

 _"Constantly."_ His voice is quiet, yet his surroundings are loud. The part of her that needs to toughen up almost apologizes if this is a bad time, but she doesn't need to, he would have ignored her call if it was. _"What didn't you say? Mine are usually mean."_

"It wasn't me." He _mmhm_ s at her to acknowledge who he's certain she's talking about, but pinkie promises for life, she signed her soul to Finn's in a confidentiality agreement. "I just. Just. It isn't working out, and I'm sad, and I need something happy," she blurts like an idiot, like a petulant child, she can just see his eyebrows arching up at her from wherever he is.

_"Then why're you calling me?"_

She doesn't even let herself think, just lets the words bare her soul. "You make me happy," she admits, closing her eyes to the ceiling, too, doing her best to ignore how her heart feels like it's thudding from her stomach, that her face is fire and she can barely breathe.

And like he's completely unaffected, life goes on. Sometimes when you do say it, maybe the moment passes you by either way, it's so weird how momentous something feels like it'll make or break you, but years from now?

Distractedly, he sighs. It sounds like his hands through his hair. _"Just hold on,"_ he says. _"Take a breath. You know everything's gonna work out?"_

"'Cause you say so?" she quips. But she believes him. She's smiling because she can hear his.

_"Yeah. You want me to come by earlier tomorrow? You gonna be okay?"_

"Probably," she sighs. Just listen to her teen heart beating.

\- -- - -- -

She's fifteen, and like, get this, she's the master of subtlety. She's coy. She's debonair. She's nonchalant and idle and like, she's got it all worked out.

Eternal loneliness is going to be alright, she kinda wants love but she kinda wants to be left alone, too? She could totally eat pasta alone and unhook her bra from behind by herself and stand under the sky or in front of the ocean and feel wonderfully small and alive all on her own. It could be that she learned at a young age that she was all she was only going to have until she wasn't, until she was introduced to her parents, but on the other hand, to love and to be loved. Love's a sort of magic, isn't it?

She's walking home from school with a boy from track, one she's known for a couple years now. He always slaps her on the shoulder before practice; he sits in front of her in study hall and she can sometimes hear what he's listening to through his earbuds -- Tom Waits more often than not, Panic! At the Disco sometimes, too, but honestly, the exclamation point really freaks her out, what happened to cause all this panic and mass hysteria, she's a little too Taylor Swift and not enough BVB. She's too Nirvana and he's kinda Framing Hanley before they were Framing Hanley? Back in garages and duct taped soundboards, hand-written lyrics scrawled on napkins and the raw amateur kinda wonderful.

He's kinda cute but his face is so guarded. He doesn't really laugh or scowl or smile or roll his eyes, he's impassive yet sarcastic and hilarious. They've called each other by their track numbers since freshmen year and it was a couple days ago she re-realized his name is actually Aaron and when he does smile, well, he's beautiful.

They've been talking about the different history classes they're taking, the new Tom Hanks movie coming out in a few weeks, if spinach makes a difference in iron and blood, and it's only when she checks her phone for the eighteenth time in three minutes that he stops.

He doesn't quite frown, but he looks at her like he's trying to gauge something. It actually makes sense when he asks, "You waiting for a guy to call or something?" with his toned arms, his green eyes stoic.

"Yeah," she says, wincing at the apology of it. She makes a show of turning it off before shoving it in her back right pocket, 'cause forget him if Ben hasn't called her yet. "A friend that's supposed to give me some make-or-break news," she defends, squinting up against the sun to see his face.

"Ben," he guesses.

But she starts, 'cause her head right now, Christ, all or nothing, he could have said Finn for all she knew but she's a little too delusional to rationalize. So neutrally she gives him a light laugh. She adjusts the strap of her backpack. "Yeah," she surmises, scrunching her nose, kinda on auto-pilot. "Guys are kinda clueless, huh?"

High school is really such meaningless chatter.

"Girls, too," he answers. He smiles at nothing, but when she looks at him, the eye contact is meaningful, and now like a script, all he has to do is say _you are, you're clueless_ , this is when the heroine gets kissed in the books, and yeah.

She's really happy she knows for fact he's crushing on the third runner in their relay circle, Sarah, 'cause an hour ago he awkwardly asked if she knew her. Like they aren't on the same team or anything. Clueless.

"You know this goes both ways," he tells her. Like this is before a meet, he pats her stiffly on the shoulder. "Since you're giving me girl advice, I could help you with a guy's perspective."

"Yeah?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe," she repeats, God, it's not a secret at all for being such a low key secret, but this is high school, this is, like, preparing them for the rest of their lives with motivational posters and students stopping in the middle of the crowded hall to hold somebody's hand. (This is the mandatory requirement to suffer the allotted hour every quarter since middle school devoted to the torturous, embarrassing devastation of dodgeball. This is that peculiar smell all teenage boys have, this is the shocked discomfort of wondering how a girl in the locker room plans to survive phys. ed. in that thong, this is mistakes and mistakes and nobody getting through it unscathed.

It's not really life, though.

It's the education that's almost worth next to nothing since it's ridiculous to assume that in a professional career, the employees will be prohibited from using any resource whatsoever, like these American standardized tests, honestly, like they even _matter_ in these scenarios. It's simulated and false and --)

Ben's influenced her way of thinking so much. She's so over it right now.

"So Sarah's free period is the same as mine, so so can coincidentally bring her down to the pit where you're practicing," she goes on. She surges into it, and it makes him grin so big she _really_ hopes ten years from now she'll attend their wedding. They walk the rest of the way with much of the same.

\- -- - -- -

When she's sixteen, she opens her eyes to see the faded stretch of his AC/DC t-shirt, his scuffed gray Converse.

"Hey," he whispers, and blinking, sleep-ridden and delirious, she realizes her pillow must have gotten up and walked away.

"Mom," she mumbles, asking where she is as she slowly pulls herself up uncomfortably from being half-on the arm of the next chair where her Mom was. But there's an aching cramp in her neck; she can barely keep her eyes open. She hates hospitals.

"She's in with your dad."

"How is he?" she remembers, recalling it all so vividly the chest pain he was having, the underlied calm and panicked way her mom drove him with her to the hospital because men in their prime, well, heart attacks could affect anyone, maybe it was something genetic.

"I don't know, kid," he apologizes. "I'm not family. They wouldn't tell me."

That makes her frown. "Oh," she says. Impossibly, her heavy eyes close again, it's the trick of childhood that when life gets hard and dangerous and painful: close your eyes and sleep to ward off reality like a bad dream.

"Someday." Plastic rustles, ice in a full cup rattle on the table on her other side.

"What?" she starts, her eyes going wide, the tired kind of alert. She hadn't heard him right, surely, like the biology homework she'd been doing, like chemistry, he takes her hand and it's rows of double helixes --

"I said move over," he orders her gently, moving her arm for her and then lifting his as he seats himself at her side. "If you're hungry, I brought some Chinese food for you," but she's not ignoring him. Her eyes close and she isn't.

Just he's really warm and she's curling in on herself in worry and there's something so second-nature about his arm around her letting her sleep into his side that has her sighing. She's got a heart and a soul and a reason to be, sleep is calming her all over so much she swears he's stopped breathing, too, but imperceptibly he tightens his hold on her.

"I ate all the egg rolls," he admits to the quiet, an afterthought he murmurs at the waiting room. Absently, he flexes his hand, ignores how his arm's already starting to fall asleep behind her.

And he just waits. It isn't really trouble at all, this. It's a waiting room for a reason, he hates himself, but he wonders why she couldn't be older.

\- -- - -- -

So eighty-four days later when he's been gone for the past sixty-two (she doesn't pretend to know what he's going through at twenty-one when the world seems kinda dark and these points of their coming-of-age existential crises, they're all each other have when it comes to not just having but _getting_ him. Understanding her, and some days her chest feels like it'll crack under the weight of this, but.) The familiarity has long since taken to them.

Looking hard at him and how he's really grown up, too, he's a bit more free with her than she thinks he used to let himself be, but still, it's like looking too closely at a picture. The beauty of it blurs when you get too close, and sprawled on the floor here, the ceiling light directly above their heads, it's really not that bright.

But maybe their eyes are just tired, lazed like their bodies strewn over the carpet with the edge of his smile so broad against her shin. His head's on her leg as Train soundtracks the day in the background, _the way you move ain't fair, you know_ , when he laughs, she feels it tremble her body into the floorboards.

He holds his hands above his eyes and looks through the gaps of his fingers splintering the light overhead, all long fingers fragmenting the ceiling and covering half his face. It makes her laugh in the quiet way she does when nothing's funny but she's elated -- it jostles his head just below his knee, and instead of looking annoyed, he holds his arm out.

"Your hands," is all he says, his palm and his widespread fingers reaching for her.

And she has to calm her heart for a sec, 'cause no way he remembers her wanting to prove her hands were larger than his when she was, like. How old even was she? Ten?

Either way, she gives up the facade of reading because she's been studying his feelings printed all over his face today. And when she holds up her hand to his, palm-to-palm, she isn't thinking Shakespeare, she's thinking of trigonometry and his red frustrated face from trying to help her, red and flustered from all that _sin_ she said before he smacked her with her notebook.

And she laughs so hard at herself and the dork she is, but like he's worried she'll fall off the floor, he closes their fingers together and pulls her towards him so she's sitting up. It's a rush so fast she's towering over his face, hazy and light and smiling for a breath until he's just.. he's right _there_ looking up at her with his eyes so brown, and hers, oh, she could -- she could say it, just let this moment enact on her feelings until she's pouring all her heart into him and going for it. This is longing, this is hope, she's --

"I'm sorry," she gasps, startling herself.

Instead of _she doesn't know_ , her hand was curling through his hair, he smiles more like a smirk and whatever that captivating moment was passes over them with the slow turn of the ceiling fan. She swallows down the pang of her heart thickly, wills her face to cool down, and instead, _instead_ , she asks him why won't he stay here for more than three months at a time, what's so great about his Uncle Luke.

"Nothing," he says unforgivingly, but his mouth quirks up. She swears her fingers ache from not touching the smoothness of his shaved face, the dimples around his mouth.

"I don't know anything about him," she says lightly.

Just the lifelines Han and Leia toss out to him in sentences about this or that, twenty-five years ago or the day before. Romantic imagery of some sunny-haired kid hanging out the window of the _Falcon_ and singing along with the Beach Boys, golden under the sun and a little more free 'cause three souls finding each other, who knew, who guessed it'd be Han that wanes nostalgia and heartsick? But maybe Leia just understands the other half of her soul needing to get away and take care of himself, and who can begrudge him that?

"I don't know anything about your grandparents either," she adds. Mostly just to see if he'll tell her as he splays his fingers over hers, drops his hand back to his side after.

"Well." He makes a face so close to laughter, but instead he just changes his voice to dark and brooding, so offended and indignant, "They thought they _decided not to fall in love_ ," he mocks, like he's been told this story before a dozen times over.

Not quite getting that, she watches the light change his eyes from onyx to honey as he smiles. And she counts to seven, imagining a messy dark-haired boy with entranced eyes listen to just one small step and reason that brought him here. "Which one of them said that and why?"

"Why's anyone decide not to fall in love?" he challenges quietly, not looking at her. "You know my dad asked my mom to marry him every day for about a year?"

She opens her mouth, about to ask why Leia kept refusing or just couldn't answer Han, but _why's anyone say no?_ Ben might throw back at her. That one, she thinks she knows. Her own light-hearted vengeance, she jostles her leg, forcing him to sit up. And she doesn't stare at his biceps when he does, muscles under the frayed sleeves of a shirt she thinks belonged to Luke Lars in 1976.

"You're gonna need some kinda romantic story like that, you know," she says oh-so casually -- she's the master of subtlety, and because he loves her, he doesn't acknowledge this is her tone of false bravado and steel to mask her half-formed ego.

He just holds up his hands again, looking at the ceiling between them. "What," he starts, "is romantic about either of those. Denial and unhappiness and then what exactly? Rejection?"

"It's happy now," she frowns, bristled and defensive 'cause it's so dangerous, that hope of saying _us_.

"What do I do then?" he mocks lightly, quirking his mouth. "What's my kinda romantic story to tell one day?"

"You can't ask me," she carefully protests, 'cause ouch if he never ever knows. "Just. Keep telling her how you feel when you mean it," be candid, never shut her out when you're too into your head, like "I love you more than anything," she says as an example. He doesn't look up, but her heart, oh, God, it's going to beat right out of her chest, she's going to split apart.

To say those words like this, she's.. she's. She feels like she's going to cry. " _I don't know what I'd do without you_ ," she tries again, things like that like her lungs feel like they're treading water and she's starving and combusting -- lost in context and his eyes when he glances at her without any semblance of emotion.

Sometimes she guesses he's known for years, but thinking about that possibility too much makes her want to cry, and she can't, she _can't_ , neither of them forget how old she is but it's like this is too close to being real when seconds ago, his lips were so close to her wrist and it's, like. Her chest feels so heavy with this: this longing, this hurt because it's too much like playing pretend right now, it's almost as if this can be the future, but it's too real. And it can't be, and maybe that's why Padmé decided not to fall in love. Yes.

She isn't sure it was her instead of Ben's grandpa, but it feels right.

"I'm sorry," Ben says randomly, seeing something in her face that sets her on edge, has her body subconsciously full of tension. She has to remind herself to unclench her jaw, to relax her shoulders, to stop her hands from being so ready to punch or caress.

"For what?"

"I don't know," he sighs. His grin is ridiculously dorky but somehow still sorry and adorable, another little flicker of the future because this, this means something. He does, and they do.

He closes his eyes a second longer than normal, then shifts just a bit, turning more towards her and setting his palm on the other side of her outstretched legs. "Rey," he exhales. "I don't know what I'd done all these years without you," he admits in the same breath. Like he's anxious, but he's so good at pretending to be brave and nonchalant and heartfelt when it's just them.

His other hand, his fingers are lying right against hers. She doesn't think, doesn't even breathe because she doesn't need to for this, this truth she knows like she's so sure of him. She'll be seventeen in less than a week, and his smile, oh, she's so hopeless. "You know I love you," she tells him.

And that's it.

\- -- - -- -

Seventeen, and she's really not Pamela Anderson coming out of the ocean straight out of _Baywatch_ (she never watched that or _Dawson's Creek_ , she just had Ben summarize them for her. And that girl in love with her best friend, a guy kinda obsessed with movies, well, okay, she regretted asking him, so okay, he sang her two bars of the theme song) okay, but she feels eyes on her as she steps up the beach anyways, so bless Finn.

He meets her halfway with her towel and sympathetically sighs for her 'cause like Poe always said, people make jokes, but it really is hard being beautiful, ha, ha, Finn wraps her towel around her shoulders. "Dude, your biceps," he says distractedly.

He's been saying stuff like that all day, _Rey, the sky is so blue today, that car has to be going like 12 miles an hour, that's the eightieth McDonald's we've seen, look at that cloud over there, all I need is some sand_ because he's trying not to think.

Every so often, he says her name like he's running out of air, like he's being torn up, but he hasn't said why since he called her late last night and his tone made her abandon Ben instantly to see if he was okay.

It's been seventeen hours since Finn kissed another man for the first time.

It's been thirteen since she rubbed his back soothingly while he threw up because of the nerves, because of the anguish, the regret, the longing -- the elation too much for him to hold onto though he hasn't said why.

While they sit on their towels in the sand, she thinks about what to say for him, yet it's just one thought she's been having over and over. "I think we're kinda soul mates," she blurts.

His head turns, sunglasses staring at her, and he smiles more like himself. "What?"

"Like, platonically," she explains, furrowing her beautifully arched eyebrows at him. "I think soul mates should be."

"What about Ben," he asks, but it's the wrong three letters and he knows it.

And she's wondered about this, too; Jesus, Ben just _loves_ when she overanalyzes shit, but listen. Sometimes love can be fickle and sometimes it can expire? Great loves, they come and they go and they last forever or they fade, and that doesn't make them any less special, but Finn's the first person she ever had the choice to love when it wasn't automatic and fated, like parents, like dogs.

It's really cute how Ben gets annoyed when they wait in long lines together, but Finn's the one that's patient with her, that soaks in the day, that's listened to her every thought constantly, that's never broken her heart, that enjoys going to the movies to watch Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, that's been with her through every bump and turn of life like a brother. Some of it's superficial, but it's the little things that matter, and it's always been him she could tell anything to or say anything to, be anything with since it seems there's a point past friendship that lasts eternally.

She tells him all this though she can't properly put it to words. A lot of those things, those are Ben as well, but deeper than that, more than just good and bad years and the expectations reality holds 'cause destiny holds their cards and knows just how much they matter and will continue to mean to each other until they're just one body and heart breathing together -- before the essence of that, there's Finn.

"I can't stop smiling," he says, pushing up his sunglasses to rub at his left eye, " _Rey_. We are forever, girlie, okay? No matter what."

He said the same thing to her when he was thirteen.

"Okay," she swears. She's satisfied. He has to know just how important he is, she thinks, and she eases back onto her elbows, she feels her heels sink into the sand. "That isn't gonna change, y'know."

"I know."

Wind kicks sand up all around them, a group of rowdy teenagers scream and laugh from the shore. She tangles her fingers in her damp hair to shake some of the beach out of the mess of her buns, mentally calculates when she'll need more sunscreen so her cheeks don't unnecessarily freckle, tries to work out how to ask without overstepping her bounds. "Finn," she starts hesitantly.

"Poe," he answers quickly. Then his chest heaves like his lungs are finally getting air. "I kissed Poe last night," he tells her. It's subconsciously reflexive, his right hand coming to rest over his heart lest it burst right out of his chest cavity. "More than kissed, Rey."

 _(Two years ago, the way he looks, she wonders for just a moment, an imploding, unrequited moment, if Finn feels the same for Poe that she feels about Ben. But sometimes maybe soulmates just are or aren't platonic and can hold up galaxies in brown eyes and an old, patched up jacket. Dark curly hair and nonchalant smiles that mean so much, that look on Finn's face, just. God.)_ Poe.

And holding his gaze under those sunglasses, she waits for him to smile or frown before she visibly reacts in the right supportive manner. Then his grin could take on the sun center-sky, so she challenges that with a grin of her own and dares to hope for just an instant. "What'd he do?" she encourages.

Finn laughs like he can't believe it himself, blink and it's gone, you'll miss everything you ever wanted. "Rey, he didn't let me go," he exhales. He remembers Poe's eyes in the headlights, the feel of his hands on his arms and how his smile curved, and he turns his head, he ducks his chin. This is him spontaneously cringe-laughing at himself and the incredulity of taking a chance, of risking it all and having it, too. "Neither of us could let go of each other."

\- -- - -- -

When she's eighteen, she's shoe shopping with her mom when she's casually asked by her if she's sexually active.

Life's at a standstill for a moment, and the cute pair of wedges she's trying on, just one foot in, the other foot so ready to run, oh, no. "This is why you offered to take me shopping," she accuses, gaping at her mom. "Mother!"

"I couldn't ask you during breakfast," she half-shouts back, stomping her foot petulantly in a way so familiar to Rey, gosh, some things aren't genetic at all. "What was I going to say? _Honey, I can't remember, I know you like your eggs scrambled but have yours been fertilized recently?_ I figured I raised you with enough sense to use condoms."

"Oh," she snorts, her throat all constricting and tight and _dying_ , "oh, my God, for real, Mom."

"I think it's a perfectly acceptable question," her mom says clearly. Really deliberate, too, almost like she's forcing the amicability in this inevitable talk, but on the other hand, maybe because Rey was young and stupid she never really appreciated just how nice it is to not only have a mom that doesn't just love her but also doesn't just _mhm_ a lot at what she says.

"You're going to definitely buy me these shoes now, right?"

"Depends on what your answer is," she snipes before she can help it, pulling a pair of dark blue heels off the shelf. "I just want to know you're being safe."

"Super safe," she winces. Sitting on the stool so she can unstrap her wedges without breaking her neck, she can frown directly at herself in the wall mirror. Super convenient. And her lipstick today is, like, wonderful.

"What do you mean by super safe? I know I never actually explained to you every way STDs can be transmitted but if you need that clarification or a picture or something, I can --"

"Mom." Taking the shoebox from her, she clasps their hands together tightly, fingers all linked and squeezing. "The safest way to prevent all that is by not having sex," she recites back to her gently, only a little pink. "So I, y'know, haven't."

While her mom does smile, her eyes don't lighten in relief exactly. "Really?"

"As far as I know."

"That isn't a joke," she huffs, plopping down next to her when she scooches over. "You really haven't? Not even with that one really cute boyfriend you had?"

"..Mom."

So nonchalantly, her mom exhales. "Not even Ben?"

Rey slowly shakes her head. "No," she mumbles, smiling just a bit more. "I haven't." At a pressing look from from her, she continues, "I won't until I'm ready," because she won't -- she knows what she's comfortable with and kissing him is just _yes_ except maybe a little more, uh.

She feels the heat in her face wear down a smidgen when her mom kisses the top of her head with a quiet sigh. "You're a good kid," she grins, pulling her into a warm hug. Their matching pink sweaters will probably rub and get the little fuzzies sweatshirts do if you wash them with jeans (don't do that, btdubs) but damn, these genes. They surely can't just be blood.

"I love you," she says into her mom's shoulder, huddling herself closer into her arms.

"I'm buying you as many shoes as you want," her mom answers back, just another way to say she loves her, too.

\- -- - -- -

"No, it's fine," Ben mumbles, holding his arm out. "That's why I got it. It reminded me of you."

\- -- - -- -

And then eighteen is almost gone with just a few months left of this.

His hands are so steady and so solid, solid ground and cloud nine with his thumbs pressed to her hip bones, skin so warm against skin.

Coffee on the counter, all that blue in her closet, bad jokes and good intentions and what would have been a perfect first date, it’s late.

Or rather, it's the time of night  
some people might call way early morning in his car, but his mouth keeps her up at night, God, even when he's three cities over her feet twist in her sheets, she sighs into her pillow. The memory of him trailing his fingertips over her cheekbones knots her up inside, his mouth over her neck quiets all her senses and quickens her heart, "To think," she whispers, pulling at the collar of his jacket, "to think I once asked you what kissing felt like."

"Did I answer?"

"I don't know," she says, but she bites her lip and the truth of it. "Not in a lot of detail."

Unreadable, almost patronizing since he's so collected and restrained here while she's losing her mind, he detaches himself from her. He runs his hand through his dark hair, thuds his head against the backseat of the _Falcon_. "Is there, uh. Anything else? You want to ask?"

"W-- what?" She pulls herself up straighter, trying not to frown and trying not to laugh. She's so acutely aware of how often they're always touching somehow until they're not: fingers locked, his arm around her back, his lips to her forehead, her hands holding onto his sleeve or the back of his shirt, his knuckles so gentle over her cheekbones. Always contact between them in some way until he's being an awkward idiot or she's too much too fast when her head starts to spin and she truly can't breathe because the kissing is that good. "..Ask you what?"

"Anything," he answers elusively. He smiles but it doesn't quite reach the dark look in his eyes and the shallow breath he inhales like he's got a cigarette, like she's a drug, but she's been so good at reading him and his expressionless face when it counts.

Or she's been deluding herself all these years. "Anything about kissing?" she asks after a clueless beat, waiting for him to scoff.

"Well, yeah," he says, his voice tight. "I don't want you to feel pressured or rushed or --"

"I don't," she protests, instinct and reflex.

"-- like you can't say anything to me. Or ask me anything."

It's hard to tell in this shadowed light, but she thinks he's blushing. She really just wants to hold him in her heart and wrap him up in her words 'cause they're going to start bleeding out of her soon. So earnestly, "I've never felt like that," she tells him.

The corner of his mouth quirks up. "I know."

"Don't make fun of me."

"I'm not," he swears, yet this small part of him still seems like he's stepping out of the car. "I don't want you to think this is just, like, physical for us," _me_ he's not gonna say, "because I actually really think you're --"

"Okay," she interrupts him loudly, closing her eyes for a second. She just needs to say it, needs him to not look at her like that, 'cause maybe she -- maybe.. "Ben?"

So lightly, she feels him brush her hair from her face, tuck the messy locks behind her ear. "Rey."

And she just. "Can you touch me?" she breathes, so, so quietly, her teeth sink into her bottom lip as his knuckles so tenderly smooth over her cheekbones, and she's so hopeless.

The silence is insurmountable around them; it just lasts and lasts with their breathing so quiet together. When his fingers span over her jaw, down from her burning cheeks, he smooths his thumb over her lower lip and lifts up her chin. "Where?" he asks. His voice is more rugged than she's ever heard it, and his eyes are so dark, oh, he skims his fingertips down her neck, follows the blush with his hands 'till he's tracing the blue edge of her v-necked shirt. "Where do you want me to?"

"Anywhere," she says, sucking in a sharp breath. It makes her lungs expand, her chest rise underneath his hand, and he flattens his palm over her heart, he's so close to where she _needs_ , oh, " _Ben_. Ben."

He leans forward when she does. He just doesn't aim so he's kissing under her eye, next to her nose, the corner of her mouth -- he's breathing her in like she's it, all he needs, when he murmurs it, he sounds like he'd rather die. "I can stop."

"Oh, my God," she gasps, "you haven't even started, _Ben_ , fuck."

"You swear too much," he huffs, rolling his eyes she can tell, but it's all his fault and he knows that, too.

She isn't sure which one of them he's trying to distract. Just before she can ask him why, though, resolve bends and breaks to resignation, to inevitability, to fire under her skin and the light in his eyes, and it's so easy.

He kisses her like he can't help it; all the world's directed this, she knots her hands in his hair and holds onto him while she sucks on his lip, while he kisses this moment from her teeth and breathes something into her that she doesn't catch. But her body hears him, she lifts her arms up and feels the hard roof under her hands. He lowers his mouth to her neck as he so slowly drags the hem of her shirt up, licking over her pulse and tracing the hollow of her throat with his teeth.

The anticipation twists in her stomach so much that she shivers into his hands and her toes curl -- he tracks his fingertips up her ribs with her shirt freeing inch and inch of her skin to his touch. And he presses his thumbs to her breast bone lightly, when he slips her shirt over her bra, God, her nipples feel his fingers as he brushes over the cups. With her shirt over her head, he kisses her collar bone softly. He exhales into her skin.

"This okay?" he whispers, warm breath hushed into her neck.

"Yes." She's trembling -- it's cold outside the car but his hands are so hot -- she's burning alive and combusting as he squeezes her hips, traces over her spine and her shoulderblade, drags his fingertips over the lines of her bra, "Yes," she mumbles, shifting in the seat so she's on her knees.

"Can I," he starts, pulling at her back, grabbing at her thigh to get her straddling his lap.

"Yes," she breathes, slotting her legs around his. She sears her mouth against him so they're tongue and tongue, quickly trying to shove his jacket down his arms and force his long-sleeved shirt over his head together. And he laughs until he isn't anymore, when she's feeling how the muscles in his abdomen quiver against her skin to skin and they're so close. They're so close, and he smooths his hands up her stomach until he's cupping her breasts.

Like electricity and like lightning, _like common sense_ , nothing makes more sense than this when he says her name and she can feel his heart so quick to the touch like he can feel hers.

\- -- - -- -

When she's nineteen, he's halfway to twenty-four and he's been on the phone with Poe for five hours talking about everything.

Finn leaving him at the airport last week, the nine straight hours they spent in Ikea together, Vietnamese food, polar bears. Why baseball dredges up really odd nationalistic feelings in them, what Poe should cook for dinner tonight 'cause he wants to be domestic instead of settling for the cafeteria. How Leia's doing, if he's made any repairs on the _Falcon_ , how they felt about the second Iron Man movie and two seals fighting over a grape.

Ben says he's thinking about new curtains -- he says he's been thinking about a lot and how life really is changing -- Rey changes it -- and Poe says he wishes he'd known way back when it was all going to work out like this years ago, maybe they'd both have paid a little more attention to the things they took for granted because they counted on them, but Poe doesn't mean Rey.

Anyways.

A fickle thing, Poe tells him he's met this girl that makes him think, that he snuck out into the airfield with, and she's pretty cool.

That's when Rey slots the key into their painted front door, her arms full of books, her smile bright while she looks to see him sprawled on the couch, the TV a muted documentary about hippos on the _Discovery Channel_.

"I wish we could have talked in person," Ben says into the phone. "Five hours, we coulda just met up somewhere." He stands up to meet her in the kitchen, studying the print of her t-shirt from across the counter, saying he wishes, sorry, but he's got a date, Poe. "Don't call me, Iceman."

\--

"I love you. Yeah. Bye, buddy."

\--

"You hang up first," he laughs, so sudden it catches her by surprise 'cause he's all crinkle-eyed and grinning. Seconds of this, but he comes around the counter to get her a glass from the top cupboard since she's too short to reach the back. "Seriously, go fly a plane or something. Go lose that loving feeling."

"Oh, my God," she says.

"I'm hanging up," he whispers, "Poe, I'm -- yeah, I'll ask. Okay. Bye. Love you, too! Bye -- hang up. Hang up the phone. Poe."

\--

"I'm hanging u--" He stops just long enough to frown down at his phone. "He hung up," he sighs, shocked and disbelieving, crossing his arms on the counter. "Hi, by the way."

"It took you eight minutes to say bye," she remarks, scrunching her nose at him. But his cute pout makes her smile, and it's such a customary little habit, reaching for his hand with hers, just a boy and a girl whose love story is still working itself out. She doesn't want to let go. She doesn't keep coming here to fall deeper in love either, but it keeps happening. "You ready?"

"Mmhmm," he says, looking at his phone, looking up to her and grinning. "Yeah. You cool with heading a few cities out? When do you need to be back home?"

"Uh." She picks up his keys, just shrugs as he pulls a hoodie over his head and pats down his jeans to make sure he has his wallet. "Next Tuesday by noon, I guess."

"That -- Jesus, sweetheart." His face does that thing it does when he's trying so hard not to laugh, like an old chalk drawing of him she once made in the driveway with stars for his eyes and a rainbow for his smile, she's just a little blindsided and dazed, all this feeling welling up in her heart. She can really, _really_ get used to this, how it's then and now all tied together, so many forget-me-knots still tying her tongue.

"I'll have you home by Monday night then," he says so casually like he's still so clueless after all this time. Like he's remarking on the weather or saying he's just seen Colin O'Donogue naked.

She really doesn't keep coming here to fall a little harder as if she never even had a choice in it, but they're here. And it really isn't a joke anymore -- it never really was -- when he says he doesn't know what he'd ever do without her because maybe always having each other, that made them so much weaker than if they'd, like, had to work for this, had to wait for this one bad disaster and mistake and person at a time for this to finally happen. For it to be so right.

"Honey," he calls. So easy out of the corner of his mouth, so flippant and honest and "Dude." She comes back to herself to see him already at the door, his eyebrows raised and his face impassive. "You coming?"

"Yeah," she breathes, pouring out her glass of water with one hand, shuffling her hair with the other to hide part of her face. "Yeah. Uhm. I probably won't tell you later, so y'know." Next to the door, she slips on her flip flops, narrowly misses stepping on an old beat-up pair of his brown Converse. "Tonight was really fun, okay? I had a nice time."

"Rey." Reaching out to pull her close to him 'cause he remembers the first time she said that to him, he hasn't been clueless at all, he could say it, _I've loved you the entire time_ , he buries his face in her neck. He squeezes her so tight. "Me, too," is all he says, and she hears him sigh. "Now get your ass moving; we're gonna be late."

\- -- - -- -

Moments in time, one day she'll find the right words to convey everything she's feeling, but she's never really held herself in check and never told him precisely what she was thinking at any given time. It's just, to say something with feeling that isn't at all contrived?

First, it's an awkward dinner out with his family where, because they're so blunt with each other and whippet-quick statements don't cut at all, some children a few tables away just _won't_ shut up. They haven't been disciplined at all in their lives, clearly, which is hilarious because Leia's patience, God, there's none better though Han looks gruff and annoyed. He keeps saying how he's amazed Ben was such a happy, well-mannered child, _was_ , and Ben is holding onto her hand so tightly between them, and then fucking hell, one of the children screams.

"Okay," she exhales, glowering as forks and knives clink on plates. "I'm getting my tubes tied."

Han blanches at her, but Leia, she can work with that, there are other ways to get her grandchildren including but not limited to kidnapping (just kidding) (desperate times, though), but Ben, he just shakes his head. "A vasectomy is less invasive."

"And reversible," his dad pipes up awkwardly. He's not as subtle as Leia is in meddling.

But this, to talk about their future in such an abstract, hypothetical way, so sure they're going to have one, _oh_ , she feels it. The rest of her life. He's tracing something on the back of her hand. "Actually." She clears her throat, reaches for her water. "If we do have kids, it's going to be all or nothing. We won't have any or we'll have, like. Seven."

"Either's fine," Leia says, sweetly albeit loudly -- the kids are still screaming. "Right, Ben?"

He doesn't look at anyone. "I can't decide that, I'm not the one with the uterus."

And second, when Poe gets married and they spend more than half the reception dancing (still not with her head on his chest or their hands over his heart, no, they didn't waltz, they made proper use of the twinkle lights like a disco ball), they wave Poe and Jess off, they get back in the _Falcon_ and they're kissing.

Her hair's long fallen out of her updo so he curls his fingers at the nape of her neck, gives the faintest groan when she sucks his lip between her teeth, but then he's palming at her thigh, setting his hand against the faint bruises of his fingers' hold from hours ago.

"The bouquet hit me," he murmurs, resting his forehead against hers. The stigma of it, he's been thinking about the meanings all day but it isn't like he caught it, no, the sun is setting and everything's purple. The sky outside her window is still a soft shade of yellow; she is, so soft and warm.

"She threw it at you," she says quietly. Raising her hands, she cups his cheeks, she holds onto his ears. "It's guaranteed now."

"Wedding witchcraft."

"Yeah," she smiles, feeling it pull at her mouth almost shyly in a way it hadn't in years. "I want the marriage more than the wedding, just so you know."

Habit, sweet, he presses his mouth to hers so lightly like he's done for years. Just a quick touch before she lets him go so he can put the car in gear, can take them home. "What if we had a theme wedding, though?"

"Depends on the theme?" When her seatbelt clicks, she slips out of her shoes.

"It could be anything. _Lord of the Rings_. _Star Trek_? _Game of Thrones_? Anything you want."

"Could I be dressed as Spock?"

"I can borrow Finn's Captain Kirk costume from a few years ago."

"Oh, yeah," she preens, absently reaching for his thigh. That year she'd been Sandy, he'd stayed in studying, Poe had been Prince Charming. "Or I could be Frodo or Lysa Arryn."

"We'd have such beautiful wedding photos," he deadpans.

"One things for sure," she says. She can't help it, she's tracing hearts just above his knee and writing _Mrs._ "We're not garden wedding type people."

"No."

Number three, she's not entirely sure he's still awake, but she's sitting on his lower back, she's following the moles spanning his skin, she's feeling each curve of his shoulderblades, each knot of his vertebrae steady under her hands.

"Can we talk about the future," she ventures, so softly like she's proposing the first time she ever said _we_ , never mind he's naked and sculpted under her, never mind how sometimes they're so carelessly blunt and can say so little by speaking so much.

She lives here. He loves her.

"We can," he offers, so slight. He tugs his pillow down closer to his face, moving both his arms under it. "Yeah," he says, "love," so absent out of the corner of his mouth, it's like the accident of stepping closer with every intention and purpose and contrition of saying something with fervency. With passion.

"You love me," she states, matter of fact as she leans down to kiss the freckle between his shoulderblades, the salty, sex taste of his skin. She feels him go all convex and fluff when he laughs beneath her, just the edge of his grin a flash against the muted yellow pillow case.

"I do."

"When did you know?"

"Oh," he says. And he -- he seems so vulnerable for a fraction of a second, all tense until he breathes, until he remembers just who is in these sheets spread over him like honey, warm and soft and the soothe to all this aching future stretched out. "For a long time. I'm not going to say always 'cause that's a lie, but for a long few years, yeah."

"Yeah?" She smiles into his back, then so practiced and eased, fluid, he turns under her naturally, on his back now so they're face to face, so he can tuck her hair behind her ear and gingerly stroke her cheekbone with his thumb.

"Yeah. It.." He swallows. He's not sentimental and sincere except he is. He always has been. "It wasn't always like this," he tells her, his eyes so light. "Clearly. But having you with me, what you do to me, that hasn't changed, Rey."

She can't help but kiss him, can't remember what she originally wanted to say about them, but that's okay. There's tomorrow.

And four, the next day, like a switch, they're both suddenly on edge, fighting, this is the part in the story where someone walks out, in songs they take half the other's heart, in movies they don't look back since they'll want to stay. Aren't they getting too old for this, tension wracking them up, the living room a standstill?

"Hey," he implores her, "sweetheart, this is working, we are, but we have to stop leaving." It really chases out all the other good that they have. Sometimes, it fills her with doubt 'cause he was always the one walking out but she's the one so ready to run now. She's thought it once, that she's the girl that's not going to come back if she has to say good-bye, but she loves, she _loves_ him. Because of that, she isn't sure she could even if she wanted to.

"Stay with me," he says quietly, _through everything_ , how time really has changed them. Because he remembers all the stars in the sky, the song that was playing the year she was sixteen when he was burning up, she looked up at him and he was done. He can still hear her ask him to please not go, quiet and desperate, so vulnerable, but even then he was already hers. "Baby," he says, "please."

She laughs, but she doesn't feel the humor in it; just the desperation. "I'm not going anywhere," she tells him. She pulls at the frayed sleeves of his old sweatshirt too-long over her wrists, and so much already, they're so tangled in each other, love just covers them both up. "I don't care if we kill each other, but we're going to be adults about this, okay? You're not going anywhere either."

"Christ. I'd rather die than leave." He exhales so lightly, so blasé. So casual about the things that ought to feel heavy and loaded; she's pictured it once, a picket fence a few statelines over. Loving each other so much they could die but working through the days sometimes they'd just rather not, too. Bless, they've got both.

Fifth, they're rearranging the living room. They've got the coffee table pushed against the wall.

They're laying on the rug, him with his head just below her knee, his hand on her thigh, her with her hair a mess all haloed around her like she's something holy, like they are.

"I love you," she sighs. Right now, she really isn't too happy about it, but it's whatever.

"I really don't care if you want to paint this room," he begrudges.

"Yeah, you do."

"It doesn't really matter if we replace the couch either," but he mumbles the words into the side of her knee, and she swears she can feel his eyelashes -- his eyes closing.

So she takes a deep breath as calmly as she can, trying not up exhale heavily so he won't misinterpret and judge his own evaluation of her moods when he knows the truth of it. God. Of course he looks up to her the instant she rolls her eyes. "Why are you so defensive about redecorating."

"Because you want to redecorate," he winces, just too much. _Too much_ to work with here and guess. "It's like you don't like the way things are already."

"It's like you're an idiot," she flippantly explains. When she tries to sit up, he stretches his arm up to anchor down her stomach. "For real, how do you, like. How does your head pick which stuff you get all angry and guarded about. It's seriously just paint."

And it -- it ends like it usually does. Give it twenty-four hours or the next fifty years, she won't remember if they resolved this by talking it out civilly. If (because she can't handle conflict well) she just punches his arm to force him to let it go. If he'll start to tickle her sides and somewhere between a ragged, laughing breath and a sharp sigh, they'll smell like carpet. And sex. And he'll have bitten down her shoulders, pulled so frustratedly at her panties that they'll never regain shape again (they were an old pair anyways with a very persistent period stain), but she'll cradle his heart in her hands, he'll sink into her skin and lose himself at peace and home there, and he'll --

He'll make an offhand, callous remark about how she picks the worst paint colors for wall space. He won't say her wanting to change things just stupidly rubbed him the wrong way, made him all tense and over-react like it means she's unhappy. Bored, wanting something else, tired of them.

They'll get the hang of it soon.

She sometimes really wants to go into the past and smack his past self -- tell him to just let go of himself, go for it with the girl since it'll be better than any of them ever imagined or hoped. She’s sure of this like she knows him as well as herself, because she was there for that part of his life. It was her life, too. She was the girl.

\- -- - -- -

She remembers him once telling her to break up with one of her boyfriends, and now she recognizes the possessiveness in his tone, the jealousy. There was something indescribable about his voice back then, but like, now. Sometimes it's the deep, heated rasp he uses when he tells her to take off her clothes or say his name louder or give him the last egg roll, so.

To be fair, though, sixteen was a bad year in her dating life. She even remembers once or twice pretending she was dating Ben, but as she's trying to conjure up any semblance of her life without him and a moment he wasn't once there for her, she can't.

Jess asks her how she stands it, having really been with just one guy -- Ben -- forever.

Something teasing is on the tip of her tongue, something quirky and noncommittal, yet she isn't feeling any of that in her heart because now, always, words haven't always been straightforward but the motives driving them have been.

He was there through everything. Not just the times he happened upon her lip-singing and dancing to NSYNC* like an idiot or he and Poe were there for the infamous bikini malfunction of her humiliation or all the glass windows she's walked into. Through her literal crying her heart out and trepidation towards the future -- family and pain and every inconsequential part of the past that matters and doesn't, he's never not been around when she really needed him. He's helped her through the most difficult times in her life, and he's also laughed with her a lot through the rest of it daily.

That's dependability and compassion and his heart and his dedication, his sense of right and wrong, entitlement to his hoodies and the culinary skill he inherited from his dad. She doesn't know how to say that he has been the only one for her ever without making Jess want to gag, but to say just enough to still keep the warmth of it all to herself so it can spread through her veins and keep her heart afloat?

"Just look at him," she finally says, sliding her (Ben's) sunglasses up her forehead to her hairline.

He's going skins in this game of football against shirts in the front yard while Poe poses a bit like a Greek god might have -- maybe Achilles in the early morning sun while Patroclus gazed on in serenity and tenderness, thanking every deity down to death himself that his aunt dipped Achilles into that water so they'd be fortunate enough for destiny to join them one day.

How lucky they all are with the football forgotten, legends made myths while ballads have the praise of a baptismal in the harsh sun.

And chiseled in light, Ben's sculpted with defined musculature and prolific features, yet she's paying attention to how his shoulders are already starting to spot with freckles and beauty because he and Poe haven't learned about reapplying sunscreen all these years. She tells Jess to look, and vanity, vanity, the way he tucks his hair in from growing up self-conscious of his ears, the absent, unbidden way the habit's stayed with him like security and a nervous tick, his face starting to tint red.

Every so often, gravity, he looks to her so idle it's like he pretends he isn't, and it just melts her all over. Because why the hell not? Because he knows all her secrets and she's shown him an old pencil sketch of his hands, because he had always listened to everything she's ever said, because just thinking his name, God, it sounds like setting a plate for him at a table for the rest of her life, because he has a dimple in his lower back and she's twenty-one and in love and all these things are what she sees when she looks at him.

How could she ever want anything else?

"He's inconveniently tall," is all Jess says from her lawn chair, face value. Wind sticks her hair to her lipgloss and she grimaces at it, at Ben's paleness starting to sunburn, and when she tries to wave a fly away from her iced tea, Poe misinterprets. He waves back like an adorable idiot.

"It stopped being a problem, I guess." Which now that she's thinking about it and all the times Ben was just a little too tall for proper grabbing distance -- kissing distance, he did joke about getting her a box to stand on once, though this was when they were younger with sweeter dispositions, autumn leaves highlighting the driveway, the radio between them and _New York can't shine as bright as you_ on the dead-end street.

"When did," she starts to say, but here -- now -- she tries to think of something natural to ask, like _when did the first orange peeler successfully skin a grapefruit_ instead of asking when she thought marriage -- when she and Poe felt it was the right time because --

Okay, let's be real, it's the twenty-first century and the institution of marriage --

Okay, she's just not going to ask within hearing distance of Ben because -- because she's a coward. But she's twenty-one and in love and dreaming and she knows what she wants. She has things she's planning and looking forward to, and like more than half the photos on her phone, he's a fixture in the picture of her future.

"Let's go for a walk," Jess mercifully suggests. But a quick look at their boys looking like they're about to offer to come with, she hurriedly jumps up to her feet. "Actually I want to change. Come help me tie my swimsuit."

\- -- - -- -

"Baby," she sighs, groggy with sleep. Her feet twist in the sheets while she kicks herself out of her cocoon so he can climb into it with her, but "Ben, no," she whines, doing her best to curl in on herself and away from him as quick as sleep-lazed movements can allow.

"You're always so warm," he marvels, his cold fingers like ice on her stomach, her thighs, her face, everywhere her skin is heated and soft and he's just mean with the winter air still frozen into his flesh. When he hooks his legs around her and presses his cold toes to the backs of her legs, she actually screams, but his laugh is a shiver against her, a last dredge of his teeth chattering from the winter air he brought in with him. "I didn't mean to wake you," he grins, she can feel it -- the edge of his teeth on her throat, his hands curving up her ribs.

She flinches when his thumbs brush over her nipples, the cold touch making them hard since really, he's just comfort-holding onto her boobs and easing himself against her body. His heart rate gradually speeds just slightly under her hands while she feels his skin warm up even slighter, she nuzzles her nose into the hollow of his throat, she tries to fight against sleep pulling at her mind, but if she's right then maybe it's close to morning anyways. "Is it your birthday yet?"

"As of an hour and," he pauses, turns his head. His stubble rasps against her forehead, his arms curl around her back. "An hour and fifty-one minutes ago, twenty-seven years back, I was born."

That thought, that makes her sigh happily. "I'm so glad you are."

And this day every year at approximately 2:06 in the morning, his parents used to wake him up to regale him with the story of the night he was born and the excruciating labor and the thrown ice chips and the crocheted little blue socks his little baby toes were in. Han would make them all chocolate chip French toast and he still does -- some things maybe just go on forever, Ben kisses the side of her face gently and says something about his uncle's face and today.

"Sleep," is what her brain tells her mouth to say instead of _happy birthday, I love you, when do you want me to give you head_ , "You smell like syrup," she tells him quietly, somewhere between sleep and awake and his silent, shaking laughter, his love for her.

\- -- - -- -

She's twenty-three. "Oh, shit!" he shouts suddenly into his phone, scaring the life out of her, Jesus Christ. "Shit! No, no, it -- yeah, we're, uh," his eyes look so panicked, "we're actually fine. Everything is fine here, now, we're fine, thank you." He pauses just a beat, a lapse in his quick rambling as he gives her a meaningful look. "..How are you, Finn?"

She watches him grimace at whatever Finn must say to him, but -- fine?

She's in the ER for a burn on her hand that she got from work, nothing major, Ben's just so worried for her like she knows Finn is since she let it slip she was at the hospital. Which is why she told him to come see her in this room, but.

"We're actually on the way home now," Ben says distractedly. "Yeah, she just has a bit of the flu, I think, or strep or mono or -- of course I know what's wrong with her," he glares. Straight at her laying there on the scratchy white sheets, and she just shoots him an unimpressed look. "Look, we're about to get to the part of the road that cuts out, so I'm -- she'll call you. Yep. Bye."

"What was that?" she asks him when he's visibly hung up. He sets his head in his hands, and all she wants to do is run her fingers through his hair. Maybe after she's quit being confused. "Why'd you lie to him?"

"Because," he grumbles, his mouth muffled by his hands.

"You're gonna have to tell me more than that, honey."

"You told him you were here, and he was at the information desk asking for your room number," he explains, setting his elbows on his knees.

Again, she just really wants to reach out and tangle her fingers through his hair, stroke her hands over his face 'cause he's shaved and he smells nice and she just. She wants to be all up in _that_ but the monotony of this room and the grey outside is making her drowsy. "You could have just given him the number," she sighs, curling towards the edge of the bed so unspokenly, if he wants, he can at least get in her reaching distance and wrinkle his suit 'cause fuck his office, fuck everything to do with that place because he had Hux explain to him everything about embezzlement and just how to abort a capsizing ship.

He loosens his tie before he climbs in next to her, too cramped in the small bed, but he likes them being this together. She revels in his weight hard and solid against her. The pain meds are making her just a little loopy, too, "Baby," he coos, quietly laughing at her. "Rey, when he gave your name to the nurse," his fingers are so light on her hand's bandages, so distracting, "you weren't in the records."

"..But I have a bracelet." Lifting her hand to cup his cheek in her hand, he exhales through his nose in another stifled laugh.

"Identification tag," he corrects dryly. "Rey Solo, but as far as Finn; your _mom_ knows --"

"Oh," she whispers quietly, frowning. This isn't really a problem exactly, not since marriage is, like, when she'd wear his jacket and felt weird, yeah, but like she was coming into herself as well, when she got his sense of humor and his reservations and his self-inclination just to now see she's got the best of him with half his heart and his hand in hers better than any ring -- that's it.

"Oh," he repeats, giving her a weird look. "I ever tell you my grandparents eloped?"

He's so unoriginal. She's eating her heart out, she's offering it to him like Hades' ambrosia. "Which grandparents?"

"My mom's birth ones. No one knew for, like. You were so happy you got through dinner without telling your family, but my grandma didn't tell anyone for years is all I'm saying."

"Babe, this isn't a competition," she says, affronted.

"No one even knew she was pregnant. And my parents -- well." That was a love story in and of itself, and her parents' wedding, well, Ben was their with Leia, just a toddler that cried 'cause Han stayed home to work and couldn't make the trip. "How about November?"

She closes her eyes, the burn on her hand stinging for just a second. "Next November is too far away to get married."

"April?" He _pfft_ 's at her when she scrunches up her her nose. "There are only ten other months to choose from.

"Why not the same date so it's less confusing?"

"A summer wedding would mean sunflowers and daisies," he shrugs. "My mom found some invitations with yellow flowers on them."

"Summer means a strapless dress," she smiles, closing her eyes and letting herself imagine. "Flip flops."

"Converse."

"Poe crying."

That makes him laugh since he can't wait for it, he's always a bridesmaid, never a bride even when he's already married. She can feel the heat from his cheeks and the slow way the tip of his nose crescents against hers. "We should get married on a Tuesday."

Sometimes it still starts her heart, how sentimental he can be like he's assumed she was oblivious all this time. It'll stop feeling like eternity eventually -- these things they've waited for and held onto for so long. Looking into his eyes and it's taking a breath, she smiles into his shoulder and says, "Okay."

"Okay," he affirms quietly.

"But what if we got married by the beach?"

"You kidding?" he asks, letting go of her. There's a voice outside the door, though, the nurse, so they're minutes away from being discharged anyways. He's respectfully in his chair when the door handle turns, idly looking at his phone with a scowl. "That would mean sunscreen," he says. "Sunburn. Sand fleas. Forget that even," he's honestly working himself up so much, somedays he loves her and everything else, but oh, he can hate. "The fucking sand, sweetheart. I don't think so."

\- -- - -- -

At twenty-four, she's probably too old to be sneak-sneaking under the cover of shadowed hallways and silent footfalls to the guest room her parents offered to put Ben in -- really? _Really_? She hit him before he could laugh, but she hasn't slept without him in.. well, a really, really long time.

Mercifully, the door closes behind her without a sound. It isn't like she's ever done things like this, it was Ben that used his window more than the front door just for the aesthetic, so she's one part guilty, two parts exhilarated as she leans against the wall.

"Oh, my God," he whispers, sitting up and pulling off his shirt. She has to squint for her eyes to adjust to moon that lights up flickers of the room through the blinds, but the beauty in the paleness of his skin all hollowed out, laying before her. "You took long enough, dear."

"Darling," she hushes back quietly, unable to tamper her grin down. They've been trying domestic phrases for each other in the wake of being a recognized old married couple soon, but Christ, like reality, like every bad decision that's turned into a good one, she just takes a moment to let herself breathe. It's easy to forget just how lucky she is.

"You coming?" he asks her quietly, shaded in the night.

But life has been bringing them here for years. "Put your shirt back on," she answers, tip-toeing to the mattress.

"No." His snark is quiet, but he scooches over so she can lay on the right side just like she likes -- never mind the bed frame is squeakier than she ever remembers it being, each breath sounds too loud and too obvious, he's almost shyly laughing when she curls herself into him so close, "Take off your shirt," he whispers.

"We're not supposed to have sex before the wedding," she hushes at him, her mouth against his collarbone. "Are you nervous?"

"To marry you? Sweetheart --"

" _Shhh_! The walls are thin!"

"You're louder than I am," he whisper-shouts back, pulling away from her. "Are _you_ nervous?"

"No," but it sounds like yes, like worry when everything is so close to being right, how can it go wrong?

"Hey," he mouths, twining his arms around her. "We've already done the hard part. We made it this far. You haven't killed me yet."

"I've wanted to," she gripes, turning her head so her cheek rests against his chest, solid over his heart. It's easy to think on the good, though, to wish away the bad.

"You're no picnic either."

"I'm a delight," she frowns, simpering her mouth against his skin. "What's the worst that can happen at the wedding?"

His answer's automatic. "Hairspray by an open flame. Spontaneous combustion. The Apocalypse? You falling on your way down the aisle. One of your ex-boyfriends objecting."

Not that he can see it, but she's giving him an arched eyebrow. "That's right up the with the Apocalypse?"

"Maybe the Armageddon," he mumbles, but no, _no_ , if she has to watch another Ben Affleck movie ever again,

"No," she huffs. She has to lift her head 'cause her hair is, like, she can't even move, woe is her. "Pick a new love story."

"As you wish."

"Ben," she laughs, "you're such a cheeseball."

"I can't think of any lines from _Romancing the Stone_ , I'm sorry."

" _The Notebook_?"

He groans loudly into her hair, a little too seductive to be annoyed, and he loves her, yes, but he doesn't always have to be thrilled about it. "I wrote you every day for a year."

"You're so good to me," she whispers, grinning in the dark at the impassive look on his face. "Y'know we're having a wedding ceremony tomorrow?"

"I know. I know, love," he inhales, breathing in her skin and the smell of her conditioner. She writhes when he slides the hem of her shirt up, but he honest-to-God jerks when she brushes her hand over the front of his boxers. "Your parents are a wall away!"

"Relax," she breathes, skimming her fingers up the buttons, over the elastic. So slowly she draws her fingers up the tense muscles of his stomach, the breath he's holding between his ribs, and in turn he covers all of her skin with his hands, a ticklish touch to the back of her knee as he hooks her leg over his hip.

He's silent a moment, almost studious as her fingers dip into his ribs, span over his chest. But as quiet as he can, reverent, he smooths his palm up her breast so he's feeling what he wants, the shell of her heart against his hand. "My mom already calls you her daughter, you know that?"

That makes her smile, 'cause well, beauty sleep, who needs it?

"My dad told me the story about when you used to want to marry me, too," he mumbles.

" _Used to_ ," she snorts, so quick and loud that he curses and covers her mouth. "Like I don't anymore?"

"No," he says, shock-serious that it startles her, "hey, baby," he whispers. He leans over intently, so she's all he sees and she -- this is longing but this is them, this is forever, and she -- she doesn't apologize for the reflex of touching him, of curling her hand up through his hair and sliding her palm across his face, of the constant contact they keep. "I'm sorry I was so mean to you."

"You weren't," she tells him, automatic because still, she could take it,

"No."

So gently, she presses her fingertips to the large bridge of his nose, the perfection she's seen in his face every time she's closed her eyes. "We were growing up," she answers lightly.

"Sometimes I was so closed off from you," he sighs, kissing her fingers when she drags them over his lips. "I should've told you more how I felt when I meant it." He waits, but then he laughs so quietly it's filling all the room, her heart, _oh_ , God. " _When you love someone_ ," he quotes, " _you say it_."

Life is such a blessed, puzzling thing, she's so full of him, her heart is spilling into her eyes, spontaneous combustion, she loves him. She does. "Dermot Mulroney," she whispers. " _My Best Friend's Wedding_."

\- -- - -- -

The afternoon was sunny, but the sky is starting to get overcast, all the best things happen when it rains, this is the perfect motif, the perfect day.

It's Tuesday.

The perfect wedding, and the applause when they kiss, they don't even hear it over the customary chatter that overlaps the cheers: such a beautiful ceremony, they look so good up there together, does anyone have a tissue?

Her mom rushes up to embrace her and then Ben when he and Poe release their vice-grip on each other. Finn and his date, they're bawling; after her mom, Ben goes to Leia and lets her cry into jacket, and everything.

Everything is light and warm and _happiness_ like this, it's almost as much as the first time and that kiss on the sidewalk, the Righteous Brothers in the car, his grin splitting his face, oh, how right it felt to put his wedding band on his fourth finger, his hand reaching out for her, "Well," says Han happily, "much better than the first wedding, I imagine."

And in the next second, he looks like he's swallowed his foot, Uncle Lando choke-laughs next to him, Leia demands _what_ while Poe keeps going _oh, shit, oh, shit!_

"I knew it!"

"You didn't!" Ben shouts. "We didn't!"

"Ben Organa Solo!" Leia accuses, standing to all her five-foot-two intimidation while Han cringes at himself.

"I can talk us out of this," his dad offers, but no!

"No!"

"Son," Lando sighs, straightening his tie. "This isn't the getaway I imagined when I gave you the keys to the getaway car. Run."

But torn between a laugh and a gasp, she squeezes his hand right back for security, to stay grounded. "A getaway car?" she asks, unimpressed.

"It's -- it's a _Rolls Royce_! We're already married! It isn't like I was going to leave you here."

\--

That's what he imagines as he tries to knot his tie, as he tries to ignore the nerves he didn't have when it was just them in the courthouse, just _them_ together with all the love in the world. His heart's beating right out of his chest.

"My hands can't stop shaking," he huffs, trying, failing to knot the damn thing properly.

"Let me," his dad offers, crossing the room in a similar tuxedo, smoothing out the tie for him, going to start to cry. "You look good," Han says, reaching up, setting his left palm lightly against his son's face. "This is a good thing."

"It is," Ben aggrees, flippant, breathless.

"She looks beautiful."

"Does she?"

"It's gonna rain any minute."

"Good."

"I love you, son," he says, looking for all the world like.. like he doesn't know, and probably won't until he's a father.

"Me, too," Ben huffs, shivering. "I mean, I do, yeah -- I love you, too."

Han stares for a second, then breaks into a grin. "Don't say that at the altar."

\- -- - -- -

She bipasses saying she loves him because it's so obvious now. It's been guaranteed since she first made him laugh so hard he shot strawberry Fanta out of his nose, since his crooked grin took her heart and didn't let it go.

She says instead that he wishes he'd just love himself as much as she loves him -- doubt and insecurity and how he sometimes still holds the hurt that couldn't shake off of him when life felt so disorderly and fragmented around the edges, like looking up to the sky, the shards of blue cut into splices by the tree branches.

It's silly but it's messy, this spectrum of emotion, and it really makes her heart hurt that he jokes about certain things instead of just taking it in stride, inside of himself, letting it grow between his ribs because _love_ , she's _trying here_ she tells him, she watches his smile upturn and lighten his eyes, and he isn't being cynical.

He isn't really free-falling. He doesn't bipass saying he loves her because it never gets old, though, he just says it's so hard, that he probably won't love anything as much as he loves her, he takes her hand in his. She has to remind herself to breathe.

She squirms at the ticklishness of his lips against her wrist, how it turns into a hiss when she rubs herself over him and he has to grasp tight onto her thighs.

"I love you," he tells her thickly, low in his chest. Pressing up for another kiss, the kind they've been sharing for an hour, he slowly starts to slip his callused hands up the hem of her dress to feel the softness of her skin.

"I love you," he says again, but he's rubbing his thumbs in circles that tease the insides of her thighs, making her cry out so quick and soft from a spur of need. The arch of her back is a rustle of her dress with its hem brushing against his abdomen, and she's shifting quickly, rolling her hips over his hardening cock.

"Mine," she declares, every part of her starting to thrum with a need that might kill her, urging a quickness into everything like it might melt. There's a possessiveness that darkens her gaze and has him swallowing -- "Your belt," she says, trying for it.

"Kiss me," he tells her instead. One hand undoing the clasp, the other holding her, he lets her press him back flat against the couch, her lips following him down with no air between them. She sucks his bottom lip between her teeth and bites, drags that moan from deep in his chest where it rumbles against her hands, over his heart heavy and full and harsh into his lungs.

Under her dress and the two layers of skirt that have her bare beneath and leave him breathing hard when he feels just how wet she is, his knuckle rubs at her slickness easily, two of his fingers spread her open, enter her and _curl_. "Oh, my God," she whispers, straining against him.

Grinding into the heat, almost as sweet as her kiss, he strokes his tongue against hers, with each breathy sound she lets leave her, she clutches hard onto his shoulders. Her nails bite into skin, rake against his neck, and it burns, she does, she's so warm, he's dying under her, this is it, she squeaks and shudders when he rubs his knuckle over the part of her that surges up and convulses, curves her back and slacks her jaw and scrunches up her eyes to nothing but beautiful, a whining lilt of _oh_ , his name over and over. Pulsing sensation floods each pore of her, blinds and burns, and she circles her hips in rocking searches for friction that urge his fingers faster.

Rubbing quick, hard on the bundle of nerves that have her clenching and _so_ close, oh, God, she's writhing and sliding herself up to the base of his cock, clawing her nails into his sweaty abdomen. He groans right with her when she tangles her hands in his hair and pulls, and then it's a fight with the rest of their clothes, nothing left but her sports bra sweaty and sticking to her skin when she's impatient and scorching enough to say _please_.

With her knees on either side of him and his pants pulled down his thighs, he helps her guide himself slowly into her, a burn still that locks her jaw and flushes down down her chest as she sinks fully onto him. But the second she relaxes is the instant she jars her hips and pushes herself down so he's deep inside her in a quick thrust, and he slams his head against the couch, he arches up into her, after all this time, it's still so good,

"Fuck," he chokes, and it makes her _clench_ when he grabs her thigh with his right hand to pull her closer, uses his left to help lift her up. He sets the pace with her so it's spasming harder and clashing and fast and addictive, tears are coming to her eyes, again, again, again, it's burning so bright. Everything in her aches.

He thrusts himself into her with each bounce of her hips taking him into her hard, her cries loud and  
piercing as she rides him so wet and throbbing. It hits him hot in his stomach that he's hers, _mine_ she said, and he about loses it there, loses himself to the urgency spiking the snaps of his hips into hers quicker and harder, heat starting to spread all throughout him and radiate into her.

Love just pours out and rips him up at the seams, her nails are marks cutting into his skin and holding on as she trembles, hazel eyes eyes half-lidded and shutting when she feels herself throb and clench around him tightly. She feels it thrum through every part of he groans that he's close with a low grunt, quick and hot and arcing up to chase the sounds away with his lips and a ragged breath against her skin. She eagerly solders her mouth to his clumsily, frantic movements aching for the release winding up her every muscle, but when he slips his hand back between them and presses to the spot that makes her cry out with a sharp keen, she almost can't take it.

She can't stop saying his name, tearing at the pleasure wracking throughout her as he still fucks her roughly through it. Again, again, _again_ , she comes down on him so hard their slapping skin could bruise, "Come on," he urges thickly, rubbing tight circles against her clit. "Fuck me," he tells her, and she slams her hips against him in heated response, taking him into her to the hilt and throbbing so much that he can feel every part of her around him, that she shouts hoarsely and pulsates and everything -- there's nothing but him in the moment, then nothing but how it whites out euphorically. How she shakes and he kisses her shoulders, her neck, her chin, her cheeks.

He holds her trembling in his arms, his palms slick against her sweaty skin as he thrusts into her unsteadily, once, twice, she throws her head back and moans at the sensitivity, drags her nails over his chest, and then he's gone.

\--

He's quivering after, his cum on her trembling thighs, his teeth marks on her neck, and it's smoldering hot and sticky and uncomfortable, but he wants her to let go about as much as she wants to unwrap her arms from around him.

"I love you," he tells her again, burning it into her skin, melding the words with touches to her sides, her legs, her hair.

She's shaking, she can barely even breathe, but he's getting soft inside her, his hard, panting breaths are beads of sweat breaking her skin. "I love you," she whispers, resting her forehead against his, letting the warmth encircle them with the truth that's inevitable, the heat they trade with sentiments, she's falling.

They've finally made it; this is it, this is eternity, maybe, his rugged panting and her shallow breaths. The light streaming in shadowed pinks through the blinds, the salty taste of his skin. Her hair curtains around their faces with the love here that's no more wistful and yearning or _almost_ , it's just here and full and theirs, their hands so light together. Their skin flushed from each other and burning red, white heat, like stars for eyes and a rainbow for a smile, he slides his hand up the curves of her skin, feels just how she's his, how he's always been hers.

"I love you." His tongue tastes like her; he can't stop saying it, every part of him feels for her more than himself, "I mean it," he laughs, so husky, and she stretches herself over him, she pours into him like sugar, like honey, time just spans and stretches so slowly like its tendrils pulled from a jar, she's always been the thing he's loved unconditionally, "I won't ever love anything as much as I love you. I got to marry my best friend."


	7. seven

"Hey!" she says excitedly, over-eager, practically shouting at him into her phone. She tucks her cell between her shoulder and her ear as she drives, just like a secretary from the nineties, _the end of_ Working Girl _always makes me cry_ , but she's so excited, oh, goodness. "Do you know how long it's been since I've heard your voice?" she asks him dramatically, coming to a halt in the traffic. "How long it's been since I've seen you? Would you recognize me if I walked past you on the street?"

_"Rey."_

"Have you gotten any of the letters I've addressed to you? I had to look at old photos of you with your mom so we could remember what you look like," she teases, turning down Rick Springfield on the radio, _you better love somebody; it's late --_ her cheeks start to ache.

She's beaming at this red light, she's missing him, but it's not melancholy. It's only been a few hours!

There's the sound of something rustling, sunlight in the three hours away he is, _"Rey, dude."_ (He calls her _dude_ when he's too self-aware and realizes just how much he's always meant calling her _sweetheart_.) She's kinda in love with it. Her heart's on her sleeve, and it's stretching this whole length of highway it takes to go upstate to the mandatory leadership conference he resents having to attend. _"You remember we talked not even an hour ago."_

"Let me be dramatic, dear."

 _"Dear,"_ he mocks, dripping disdain. But then he says _ow_ so quick that it startles him into laughing, and she.. well, somedays, they're just ontop of the world. _"I'm standing practically in a rosebush just so I can talk to you,"_ he admits. _"There's no cell service in my room or the lobby or anywhere."_

"Ben!" she can't help but gush, he's so cute, he hugged her for a whole half hour before he had to drive away. " _Dude_! You're so obsessed with me, you're so adorable."

 _"Uh huh. I've been here two hours already and we had to go on in a circle talking about our respective childhoods. I'm angry."_ When be sighs, though, it sounds like his hand through his hair, his tie loosened around his neck.

Which is so cute, but she's so biased and loving every second of this. "Did you get an introspective look at your coworkers' lives? Did you talk about me?"

_"I learned Pat had an alcoholic mother who once chased Steven Tyler through a Wal-Mart parking lot."_

"Well, I'd do that, too, so." God. Just a couple days more. Three nights.

_"After lunch we all get to share complaints about each other to problem-solve and communicate more effectively."_

She can't wait to hear what his co-workers say about him. "You can always come home," she tells him cheerfully, unhelpful because she knows he can't. It's hilarious to her, all the running off and sneaking in when he was younger, she's merging left, what he won't do now because they've both grown up quite a bit.

 _"I'll call you before you go to bed, okay?"_ he pacifies. He sighs heavily, as much for himself as for her, _"But if we're forced to do trust exercises, I'm mysteriously coming down with a cold."_

"Okay," she smiles. She can't help it; she taps the gas pedal lightly with her foot, she sets the heel of her left hand against the steering wheel and imagines a diamond ring for just a quiet second.

A habit and a promise, the future is like a shadow passing over her ribs. Her heart seriously flutters like true love or the need for a pacemaker or something.

There's a pause lingering over the line that, when they're both ready for it, they'll fit an _I love you_ into it sweetly, quickly if it becomes next to nothing in routine like it already is to so many people, but it'll be natural. It'll be time. The clock on her dash changes to 11:26. So much of being twenty is awkward.

 _"Alright,"_ he says after quiet that's lasted decades of seconds too long. She winces at her reflection in the mirror, internally apologizes for her driving at some poor silver Kia. _"I'll talk to you soon,"_ he promises, _I love you, "you had better be wearing your seatbelt,"_ but his voice is so angry and threatening as he hangs up.

He's got it so bad. She's so heart over head.

\- -- - -- -

One, and "Not everyone gets to stay with the person they fell in love with when they were young," Poe tells him.

It isn't like he's jealous or bitter, not at all; they're looking at display cases of engagement rings and this is like the gentle warning his best buddy has given him at the start of each major decision of his life. Poe's still the type to have a change of heart if he's given enough reason to, to better his reasoning and improve his calm argument instead of raising his voice in a fit to fight, but "Ben, not everyone even wants to marry that person in their lives."

"I know," he answers. He isn't sure if he's being made out to be lucky or not, though still a part of him recognizes that bit of dourness, that tone of his voice that's grasping for straws from the past and wondering just why exactly people don't. Why life doesn't work out like it should.

"Are you okay?" Ben asks. The silence just kinda stretches, coats heavy around their shoulders.

"Yeah." And Poe smiles, because when the fucking hell. Isn't he.

A distraction, he points to a ring under the glass, a simple platinum band on a cushy blue pillow, the last legal form of slavery, he's gonna say it, he's gonna ask what the hell happened -- "I think." Poe clears his throat lightly then grins.

Maybe some things just don't have an explanation? 'Cause he does feel sure. And in love. And like he's doing something right here; he's making a future happen.

"I think I'll get Jess that one."

Second, she's fifteen and his anxiety is seriously freaking her the hell out.

He's driving his mama's car since he's pretty sure his Uncle Lando took his spare keys and -- shared custody of the baby -- took the _Falcon_ for the day (week and a half) (tO VEGAS _I mean, come on!_ Ben shouted at him over the phone, _you could have taken me with you!_ ) with no return in sight.

But either she's been blind this whole time to his terrible driving, or he really can't handle a car that was made in this century.

He's freaking her out with his comments about the speedometer, the two wheel drive, the way this car brakes so smoothly, it -- it's only four years old to the _Falcon's at least_ thirty-two, but he apologizes to himself, to every car that he passes or passes him. He won't stop cringing. He's kinda hunched over the wheel, too, like an old man 'cause Leia's car is so compact and the last time Maz marked Ben's height on her diner wall, she had to stand atop a bar stool and he was 6'1".

She swears he's taller still now. She could bet her life in full confidence for every fact she's had memorized of him since the things that made him Ben started to matter to her. She'd bet it all without thinking, but trading it all, never, not until now where he keeps looking at her like he can't stand her.

He's told her that the airbags would probably kill her if they were ever triggered. Like, they would shatter her chest cavity. Maybe break her neck. He's told her seven times so far.

It's seriously freaking him out.

But she worries over him, too, whether or not he stays hydrated, if he keeps holding onto the hurt he doesn't let go of, if he needs like a special mattress because he's so tall, if as much as he smokes is going to hurt him one day and she'll wish she could smack him out of dialysis.

Because his awkward on-the-edge aloofness is making her want to grit her teeth, she folds her arms over her chest but glares at him instead of out the window. "Your hair is too long," she bites, trying to seethe or make him laugh.

As snide as she is, though, he's cutting and he's cruel in an effortlessly brusque way that for once isn't funny, but hey, she doesn't know about that incident yet. So if this were years from now, if time would just slow down when he isn't going twenty-five in a 40mph lane, he wouldn't scowl at her so meanly.

But this ends the same anyways. "I seriously can't drive if you're going to keep talking," he forces himself to say as civilly as he can. "All I keep thinking is that these airbags could kill you. Who the fuck invented them anyway? Who had the bright idea that they could kill small children --"

"Ben!"

"Would you get in the backseat if I asked really nicely?"

Her answer is instant. And hurt and really devastating in that reminder of just who they are to each other. Oh, well. "No." Then she tries to exhale calmly, "I'm not doing that."

"But Rey." He winces, because every single car looks way too close, and if this car was so much as tapped by another vehicle, dear God, he really wants to phone his mom just in case they don't make it back.

"..I've never really asked if you got your license."

"Sweet Jesus, I'm driving, alright? I know how."

She rolls her eyes at his shouting. "That isn't an answer."

Third, and he kinda wishes she was one of those women that wanted to be married and a mother by, like, twenty-five.

Which isn't exactly fair because maybe he doesn't want kids? Maybe he'd be a terrible father? Maybe they'd inherit his ears? Maybe they'd both be too busy for the child so what's the point? Besides, he's totally all for women not wanting to have kids like the bigotry of caste-type gender roles have pressured their uteruses and hormones and faulty birth control methods into having. That's perfectly fine. And acceptable. And oh-so modern, this twenty-first century is doing pretty okay, right?

Well, when his female co-workers make the same amount he and the other idiots do, he might revisit that, but having children?

Whenever she does mention it, it's really vague and teasing. Noncommittal and evasive. He always assumed that'd be him that would fall through plans and her expectations or wants, which -- she isn't either, but how does a man say _hey, I want us to have a kid or twelve around here in nine to one hundred and eight months?_

He couldn't even propose properly. How is he about to do this?

Four: "Just do that thing," Poe suggests wryly, watching Finn's face flare from doubt to impatience to annoyance, "where you imagine the audience in their underwear."

"Yeah," Finn grimaces after a beat, holding his index cards tightly. "That's really going to help my speech. Good thinking."

"Well." He just shrugs idly and doesn't mean it when he tunes out the rest of the monologue he's heard thirty times by now. He just bites on the inside of his cheek when Finn glances over to him for assurance he's hanging on every _enticing_ word, but then he gets an idea, squats, starts to untie his shoes.

"Will you -- I am speaking about integrity!" Finn blanches, flushing when Poe grins crookedly at him like he always has so vividly since the day they met, "Don't --"

"I'm helping your visualization."

"You're taking off your jacket."

"And my shirt," he adds lifting the hem of dark blue over his chest, feeling it static through his hair. He sounds too sure of himself, too breathless as he starts with his belt: the age-old trick of distraction, of just trying to get what you want and to hell with the rest of the world because they've lost their chances as many times as they've reached for them, everything is either-or, "Finn."

He sets down his cards. "I don't think you're doing it right."

'Cause well, he could help him for starters,

five.

"I don't think I'd care if I never saw you again," she laughs, just too much bravado in this sunshine but the flowers are starting to die and the leaves, too. She watches his insulted look flare and spread into incredulity and there goes the rest of her self-confidence, _oh_ , this time she's sixteen and happenstance accidentally tosses them within a twenty yard range.

He rummages through the console for old napkins from Sonic, Starbucks, Wendy's (he jokes that's his current girlfriend since he's been there four times this week already and it's Tuesday) so she can dry her face and her hair if she wants. She's dripping rainwater all over these worn and stained seats and he's the knight in dented, rusted tin, and she's..

She's not the commanding, powerful woman she wants to be, the one that could break his heart with how collected and killer she is in disarming situations just like this outside a post office building, but she's just sixteen.

She's still trying to figure out eyeshadow, she might never outgrow this awkward part of herself that isn't ready to let go yet.

Clearly, if seeing him both surprises her and feels so warmly familiar, if just a part of her knows somehow that if it ever counts she will be all or nothing -- she's good with saying _good-bye_ and meaning it forever if she has to, she's learned that already. She's discovering these things about herself.

She's now a few years older than he was when they met, and she's catching up so slowly, she is, "Sorry," she winces, smiling a bright, reflective apology. "I wasn't listening to you, really."

"Really?" he drawls boredly. He makes a face right back at her. "You want to get something to eat?"

"Always," she answers, but she mumbles it at the wind carrying the rain in splashes downpouring the sparse streets.

"Y'know." These impending, momentous lines, though, they don't always have that heart-stopping trajectory they're delivered with, _life's not a movie, kid_ , because if this was, oh, God. He wouldn't sound so awkward, so pained. "Never seeing you again would be the worst. I'm gonna come around more often, okay?"

\- -- - -- -

And forgiveness claws like it has teeth, washes over her slowly like the realization this is hope, but hope -- oh, God, hope.

It's gnawing in her stomach, it's her hands feeling so clammy, her head so silly, it's like a burden weighing at her shoulders, pulling her down and eating her heart from the inside out. That's hope. Call it the eighth deadly sin, call it what it is: longing, guilt, something irrevocable.

She's about to say no, _thank you very much_ , she will not, he doesn't have to, she -- she's being pulled up by the sleeve of her sweatshirt, she's thinking _not like this_ as sweat starts to break out on her forehead, as other teenagers she doesn't really know plus Poe and Finn start to titter and start a kitchen timer. But then it's suddenly quiet, so quiet she can't hear her thoughts over how hard her heart is thudding in her chest and shaking her up.

Her feet stop autonomously taking her to the closed door, and he actually has to steady himself with a hand hot on her shoulder so they don't collide and it's WWIII, code red, she's _dying_ here, "Come on," he says quietly. He reaches over around her, and she's all too aware of his arm brushing against hers accidentally, intentionally, oh, no.

Someone shouts to take their time as he gently pushes her into the closest, and as far as she's concerned, the next seven minutes are unfair hell.

"Ben," she whispers when the door latches closed and then clicks -- they're locked in, of course they are -- "I really.."

She has to trail off when he pulls the string that turns on the light. She's blinded, looking up at him, she expects him to laugh or scoff or roll his eyes, any other scenario, they'd be cracking up like eggs. But his expression is painfully serious. So serious she worries, and it almost hurts for an impossible second, this hope that's twisting into embarrassment, into anger.

She tries to step back, but this closet is small. It's a little pathetic, she presumed it'd be as 'spansive as Narnia so at least all the Pevensies could fit in here with them, not just him and her, their bodies so close, his eyes so dark.

"What?" she has to ask a second too late, but he doesn't roll his eyes in annoyance. He kinda looks like he isn't sure what he's supposed to do.

"Are you okay?" he repeats, light enough to be gentle and.. and like he's calling her _kid_ and being patronizing when the purpose of this game is to, like -- like, _kissing_ , and she didn't really expect they would?

He's eighteen and he's beautiful and he's laughed so much tonight, just freeze him in a picture frame and forget everything until two minutes ago when disappointment is starting to tread her lungs in her blood. It's heating up her face; she can hear her own heart, him breathing in front of her, and it stings when he holds onto her arm so he doesn't lean back and slam into the door. He's done this sort of thing before.

He's searching her face for something, but at once, she can't meet his eyes. She's ashamed or conflicted, her thoughts can't tell because she's considering _what if_ she just leaned up, took his heart in her hands and kissed him?

What if their mouths meet, and it's.. it's breathtaking and electric, and he tips her chin up with his hand and she curls her fingers in his hair and they just _collide_ like she dreams, gravity and constellations and heartbeats and forever, _oh_ , she wishes, she _yearns_ , she --

She goes all convex when he reaches for her and drags his thumb so softly over her bottom lip. Like a kiss might feel, as he inhales this awkward air between them. She has to consciously remind herself to breathe, that maybe if she was older, that this isn't actually -- this means nothing.

"I really hate lipgloss," he admits, as he smears it believably at the corner of her mouth, under her lower lip. "It's sticky."

And that, that she can work with. It's all coming back to her like this routine they've fallen into after several years, except somehow maybe more? Without really thinking since he's unzipping his jacket, undoing the top buttons of his shirt and making himself look haphazard and thoroughly kissed, thank you, she touches her lips like reverence before she forgets it. Then she touches his bottom lip just barely, just a glimmer and a pink sheen of what might have been if they were braver. "It tastes good, though," she defends nonchalantly.

She's intentionally not looking at him when his eyes flash at her in alarm. "..Let your hair down."

"We don't have to pretend we did anything." She feels so stupid for saying that, even as she's untwisting her rubber band from her ponytail and wondering if he does this, if he curls his hands through a girl's hair when he kisses her.

"It might keep me from coming back in here," he answers flippantly. _Now_ he leans back against the closet door, rattles it on its hinges a bit. "Mess up your hair some more. And can you -- uh."

She can't place the longing that's now aggravation at him, anger spurned scathing irrationality. "Can I what, Ben?" she huffs, not missing his eyeroll at her.

"Take off your hoodie."

And damn him, she has to bite her lip to keep from laughing, she's such a teenaged girl. "Are you kidding?"

He shrugs. "No."

"You want me to take my shirt off, too?"

"I'd hope you'd hypothetically put it back on before we went back out there."

"Hypothetically," she snarks. All those feelings, they gut back into this, how whole it feels just to talk to him. To stand with him in a 4x4 closet, to make him laugh while he straightened Poe's hair to make him Captain James Kirk, to understand him. And to be so _deep_ into this, she feels it burn behind her eyelids and quell up right in her chest where it's starting to ache.

She hears her breath hitch so obviously, she doesn't look at his lips to see his mouth curl. If she's here, if both their names were drawn from a basket like they were reaped, then she doesn't want his cynicism and his casually honest mockery to tarnish this anymore. Sometimes she hates him, she does, except she doesn't and likely never could (still, if you're a woman, you understand).

Her hands pull him down by his shoulders, his neck, closer to her face _so near_ to her, she could count each of his eyelashes if she tried, every speck of amber softening the dark brown in his eyes to laughing, to shy.

"You're so handsy," he remarks, clearing his throat as she just. She just starts to tear her fingers through his hair like this isn't costing her anything at all.

"It's about time for a cut, isn't it?" she asks cooly, letting the ends of his hair slip through her hands before she starts to just mess up the dark strands like she assumes she wants to if they were doing this kissing thing for real instead of just a dab of her lipgloss over his mouth. "Maybe just --" she tousles his hair so it's like it's messily styled all wrong. "I'm trying."

"I believe you."

"I haven't done this," she whispers unnecessarily, so awkward, let's just go carry watermelons or something.

"What?" he wonders, light enough to be kind without making her feel like an idiot. "Played this dumb game?"

She tries not to grimace. "Been kissed," she tells him, feeling her face so red.

But he doesn't say he thought so or anything else embarrassing like that. "That's cool," he grins, like a goof, like her best friend, but then he tells her to wait until she's thirty and she's over-reacting and angry again.

"Shut up."

"Less than a minute!" Poe shouts at them from the other side of the door.

"Well," Ben says quietly, sighing. But then he smirks just as quick, steps closer to her, so close -- he lowers his mouth to her ear and she _swears_ she can feel his lips against her skin in a touch so brief it's making her dizzy. "This was great," he whispers lowly, teasing, so deep that she shivers backwards into the hanging coats.

Then he lowers his head. Hovers his mouth over her neck so it looks like "Oh my God!" Finn shouts when someone -- him, probably -- opens the door. "Oh, my God! You two!"

"You were great," Ben murmurs, all snark and a wink and a smirk as he straightens up and away from her.

"You two," Poe half-shouts in something like triumph; it was him that pulled the names from the basket, him that dog-eared both their cards so he could see _what if_ , but a glance from Ben, that shot in the dark, they missed it.

\- -- - -- -

"I'm just saying," Ben just says quietly, almost like a joke except sometimes he's dead serious, sometimes he's so ready to run that his fingers are itching to burn, that he could set the pavement on fire if his resolve tried hard enough. He taps his fingers against the steering wheel like he's impatient, but as much as he thinks of leaving, of just driving away to add another collection of license plates to the _Falcon's_ legacy, he knows he never could.

She watches him glance to her before he flicks his gaze up to see Poe in the rearview mirror, snoring asleep in the backseat still in his Airforce greens. They're driving him home from the airport; she's sixteen, she's so tired of this, too, the heavy rain sounding saccharine against the roof like this is a movie, her knit scarf and her red mittens.

He and Poe sang so loud to _Because You Loved Me_ when Celine Dion came on the radio, but who's she kidding, she loves this.

He's been twenty-two for three days, he's been home for the past seventy-eight. She's past pretending it didn't matter he was gone so much, not one bit, she could never pick up the anger like her cell phone or the grudge she's held since he was eighteen anyways -- she always forgot herself and he got a grip. When she was mad, he caught her fist the one time he pissed her off so much a part of her really wanted to see him hurt, but he laughed in that soft way he does, his mouth smiled right out of his scoff.

He told her she was closing up her hand all wrong for a fist, that he didn't want to get her in the E.R. for broken fingers -- assuming she could aim and actually hit him.

She did after that, got him a bag of frozen veggies, too.

She's got a ratty old sweatshirt he forgot one day from the living room; she was tired of rom-coms and Nicholas Sparks tragedies that felt less like a beautiful pain of unrequited love and more like a warning label. So he said he was going to change her life as a picture of stars moved on the television screen, _Space_ , and music began to play, _the final frontier. These are the voyages of the star ship_ Enterprise, _it's five year mission to.._

She has all these years that sometimes make her wonder if this is luck or something unfair, because the things he's said have always stuck with her like the startled look on his face when he says them, _little girls don't usually have backbones_ or _I wish we didn't have to meet you so young, I'll know loss forever_ because he's a melodramatic miscreant, because he smiled when it made her laugh.

There's an only and there's an ever, and then there's Poe's quiet snores, "Montana," she finally says.

He looks at her briefly but she doesn't return it, just shrugs as an answer while he goes thoughtful. "There'd be a lot of nothing there."

"There's a lot of nothing all the other states this rust-bucket has seen," she mumbles. Then to be conniving, she says, "I don't think this car would get you anywhere else," though it's not the _Falcon_ that tries.

"I don't know," he sighs. "This car has had more license plates than I've seen, states my dad has been in, Uncle Lando before that, my mom and Uncle Luke. There's twenty of them hanging up in the garage."

"I think you're just trying to come with a reason," she tells him, turning down the radio just a bit because she feels like she needs to be doing something. "I don't think you care about seeing mountains or cows or beaches that much." But she should, _what are men to rocks and mountains?_ He just smirks so much like his dad, so much rugged charm that she remembers when he had to grow into it, when talking to any girl except her made him beat red.

Sometimes he still does, and she hates that as much as she loves that.

"I think I'm too stationary," he says idly. His eyes harden just barely to something protective when Poe stirs in the back like he's been jostled awake, and his buddy tells him to join the Navy if travel is what he wants, at least he's moved away from the Army, but no. That really isn't what Ben wants. "My dad's been all over, every state he visited he nicked plates from off abandoned cars. Every Confederate state."

"Oh, my God." Dramatically, she thuds her the back of her neck against the headrest. "What about the border states? He been to those?"

"My mom got those plates with Uncle Luke. She really wanted to, like. I don't know. She really liked the idea of the neutral states and the diplomacy in that, I guess. And she made it to California."

"That's nice," she hums. It's a little hard to sound complacent when she really doesn't want to be talking about this, the faraway places he could go.

"The first plates this car had was Nevada, did you know?" She gives him a pointed look, like anyone this side of the Mississippi doesn't know Lando Calrissian made his name in Vegas. "It'd probably take three days to get there," he continues, rolling his shoulders back. His neck cracks, all the way exposed for a second, pale white against his gray coat. "Four or five to get to the coast of California if we don't hurry."

She doesn't even realize she's startled until self-awareness has her hand clutching at her heart obviously next to him, she just can't help herself and the reflex that has to hold on and ground herself, because he -- _it's been four months,_ she said, angry and malicious and picking the splinters out of her hand, gnawing on bone with her teeth, _would you even recognize me if I passed you on the street?_

He's stoically staring straight ahead. Her facade isn't a facade at all, and lightning strikes out of the corner of her eye, _Would you?_ he threw at her like the suitcase he had been unpacking, so fucking sadistic, a part of her does still ache.

"Where would you go?" he asks. "If you would," because it used to be such a grandiose thing to him. He just keeps ending up in his mom and dad's driveway or on his Uncle Luke's porch, and aside from that, he doesn't really want to be anywhere else. Except for here.

"I kinda want to go wherever I was born," she admits after a little too long. The thunderstorm has lightened to a pesky sprinkle that shades the world in new light, yet it's somehow the quiet that rouses Poe from his sleep, the soft wistfulness of that secret that has him reaching out.

He nudges her shoulder with his hand until she smiles and twists, threads her fingers with his so easily that Ben can't believe it, it was that simple the entire time, "Honey," says Poe, his voice still rough. "Wherever that is doesn't make you who you are. It's geography."

She grins way too bright, only stops because Ben's frowning darkly at her. "I know."

( _One night when she's sixteen, he helps her research the town she was born in a few lonely highways away and he's just her whispered, decided_ don't _away from finishing the search for her, for finding her birth parents._ ) That's a little less than a month away, though, and he'll hold her as she cries because she just _doesn't know_ ,

"I mean." She clears her throat lightly for anticipation, and Poe rests his cheek against the side of Ben's seat. "In the attic, there could be a milk carton with my face on it for all I know."

"You don't have an attic."

"But you do," Poe grins back, meeting Ben's eyes in the mirror. "I've always wondered."

"Hey now," he warns, but there's a glint of his white teeth with his absent smile at the dash. "Here's all we need, right? Here's pretty good."

"The best," Poe agrees, and to prove it he squeezes Rey's hand. He grins at her until she starts to giggle, just a little pink.

"I think I'd like to see Maryland, though," she finds herself saying. "Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island."

"Delaware," Poe offers.

She nods, but then the car slows precautionary. The rain's starting to freeze into flurries, into ice on the road. Ben turns up the heat, moves the vent it's coming out of so it's aimed towards her. "Florida."

"Like Miami? Or like, North Florida?"

"What's the difference?"

Poe shakes his head before he curls back up under the blanket Ben brought for him. "My sweet summer child. It's the swimsuits."

"Well," she laughs, "I'm out then. Being stationary is pretty okay."

\- -- - -- -

_She hates feeling so unaware, so blind, so clueless; here Han walks into the room, except he never just walks._

_He's swaggering, there's too much of him, he's always moving somehow, his mouth, oh,_ help. _He's always talking at her or grinning to her, smirking, grimacing. It's stopped feeling like a free fall since that's intentional. This is him not really knowing how to ask her to stay, him soaring too far out of her reach, "Hey," he says, except for once the goof isn't smiling too carefree to pretend he doesn't give a damn._

_She focuses on the laundry she's folding on the stark white table cloth -- she breathes in, she breathes out._

_But he's stretched himself into her space, he's filling her up and her heart already feels torn to shredded holes. "You're ignoring me," he accuses, goading like he's hilarious._

_Of course she has been. "You're delusional."_

_"Well." And he isn't hovering over her, he isn't, but he's just so tall, he's seeing straight through her, he always has. She makes the mistake of looking at him, his mottled green eyes peering down at her, one quirk of his mouth away from ogling at her like she's the moron here. "I can see you're so busy you can't spare the time to talk to me, princess."_

_"Would you stop?" she snaps at him harshly. She instantly regrets the flare of her temper because at least he isn't calling her his sweetheart, at least he doesn't say she's his love like it's a joke._

_All he does is stare at her. And whatever he sees in her face, it must verify what he's thinking. Or just confound this more. "Is this me and you, kid?"_

_Oh, help. "I don't know what you're asking me."_

Wait, _he's saying,_ come with me, _but not yet, she can't, "Is this us? Is this you really meaning it when you frown and walk away? Leia, if this is you and that kid, Luke, I'll --" leave, he would in a heartbeat for her happiness, but "-- hey, okay," this is so much harder than a good-bye, "if you really don't want to talk to me, that's fine."_

_She's waiting for him to keep talking -- to joke that she'll miss him or it's not fine at all, he takes it back, but he holds open doors for her. He slings his arm over her shoulders and he holds her hand, he tells her to drive safe and he says he gives a lot of thought to them together._

_He's intruded on her space again, so close to her she can feel the body heat curdle in the tension squaring her shoulders in rigidity, and no. He's so easy with everyone, with her, and she.. she tries. But she isn't there yet._

_When he raises his brows at her, gawks ridiculously as if he doesn't have the patience, as if he never said he'd wait a long, long time just the other day because his mouth is always moving, this has got to be gravity or something infinite and cosmic, she -- she can't say why she's suddenly angry._

_Just for once she wants to look down on him instead of up. She doesn't want to feel like he shakes her up right into a muddle of anxious and endeared nerves. So she steps up onto the kitchen chair, but he follows her with a step closer, hovers his hands around her hips like he fears she'll fall. She raises her chin, though, 'cause inexplicably, looking down on him isn't right either: his forehead level with her shoulders, the way he's still searching her face for the fact of something he's known all along._

_He's the one that keeps leaving, but she's running all over him._

_This talk is pointless._

_It's clear how it's going to end, yet it's so difficult for her to be easy with anyone. Especially him. His hand curls through his hair so presumptively. "Well?"_

_"I don't owe you anything," she says, trying to sound contrite._

_"Except," and his eyes are laughing at her gently, he's too expressive and_ something _for her to properly think, "you do. Listen."_

_"I was busy, believe it or not --"_

_"Leia. Come down."_

_"I can't," she's saying, he acts though this is the simplest thing there is, but her pride, her doubt. Her resolve just building up, creaking ontop of this chair. She's trying is what she means,_ wait, _but without her being aware, he's inserting himself away from her. He rubs at the bridge of his nose._

_"You know," and collectively, one corner of his mouth lifts to quip at her, she can't be this easy with anyone, "I don't want to have to be gone for you to realize how you feel about me, okay?"_

\- -- - -- -

It's the middle of the night, warm in bed, and she whispers that it’s insane to her how they've managed to grow up together.

Her voice is quiet and fluttery like she’s seconds away from sleep, sweet enough that it makes him smile with his arms around her as she marvels at it, the way some people can change in just a short span of time, and she's just twenty-one. She says he's almost thirty -- "I'm twenty-five," Ben interjects, affronted -- but that's when she pushes herself away from him, runs her hand over every inch of his chest.

What she means is it's so crazy to her that they're here, that one day ten years ago Han bemoaned the fact they hated each other and both their parents felt the exhaust of that, the days she and Ben couldn't stand each other. What she means is she really wants him to wait, because how can anyone even be sure that they and their partner will grow at the same rate? In the same direction? At the same time?

He once said it and it cut up her insides, _Rey, you're so young_ , but she's grown up, she's her own person, he's going to want a marriage sometime, he's going to want babies, and she's still trying to figure all this out, how he's brushing his fingers through her hair and she's so in love with him.

She is, but what if they move at different paces? What if she gets left behind, or what if he --

"You're not making any sense," he interrupts patiently, lovingly as he caresses her cheekbones with his knuckles, traces them down the curve of her jaw. "You know what my dad tells me? That we talk about the past so much, we're gonna run out of it. Then there's just the future."

"We talk about the future," she reminds him, forgetting herself and that look in his eyes shrouded in the darkness, the green light from the clock mottled patterns on the wall. "We talk about us. But what if this changes --"

He interrupts her tactlessly, amorously. "It's supposed to change. We aren't supposed to remain like this forever."

If he isn't understanding, then well, sometimes she chooses to rebuild a car's engine instead of thinking about it, sometimes she kisses him instead of thinking about it, this meticulous, easy bliss, how like. "Okay," she just _has_ to bring up, slipping out from under the covers so she can sit next to his heavy sigh, his labored breathing. "But these problems, Ben."

He snorts. He takes hold of her bare leg, pulls it across his chest so his fingers can blindly shape the slope of her shin, the ticklish underside of her knee. "These aren't problems we're having."

"No, but they can be." She feels it lying in wait, for as much time as they spend fighting, they never argue about the real important things, the issues that make or break or killed Paris or split apart Vera and Roland for a good twenty minutes of the film. "People growing apart because their wants change or they change? They no longer have the same wishes for their life and they're in different -- hey," she gasps.

Her knee jerks reflexively, his beard prickly and ticklish against her skin, but he drags his lips over her knee and heat covers her whole body at once, starts to entice her nerves and betray her. They were having a discussion, he's marking up her thigh with gentle nips of his teeth _so_ close she's losing it, "Ben," she exhales in a breathy lilt, "I wasn't finished talking about this."

"I'm listening," he insists as he splays his fingers over her thigh, palming at her. "Do you not think I'm going to wait for you if this happens?"

"I think you won't ever," she says confidently, because the answer has been there all along. Her doubt is so silly, her worry stupider since he knows just as well as she does how in this together they are, but still. "But I want you to be happy."

"You sitting on my face would make me happy," he mumbles as he pulls on his shirt she's wearing, helps her left leg come to his side so she's seated on his chest.

It's friction for just a second -- sweat starts to break her skin and the air changes, she swears, "Okay," she says quickly before she stops being able to think, "okay, okay," he's rubbing circles to the insides of her thighs _almost_ at her heat, almost, "okay, _oh_ , 'kay, Ben."

"Baby," he honest to God laughs, "I'm barely touching you."

"I know," she blurts, breathing deep, knotting her fingers through his hair. "I just -- I'm.. preparing myself," she explains, nearly whining, "I'm thinking."

He doesn't even miss a beat, just slides her closer to his face, leaves a wet kiss against her skin. "You're a dork."

"Yeah, yeah, but this, uh, people get divorced because of this," she keens, the flat of his tongue edging up further and further.

"This?" He stares up at her closed eyes, her parted pink mouth. "..You not want me to go down on you?"

"I mean rates of change and growing together and --"

He quiets her by drawing up her thigh, biting her soft skin. "Well, we aren't even married, so we can't get divorced, so.." he trails off, just a touch awkward.

"Oh. Oh," she realizes, her knees squeezing his head just slightly when she starts to cackle. "We're not, are we? Oh, my God."

\- -- - -- -

Seventeen, and patience tries to trickle in her stomach, but it quails against all the other griefs she hasn't been able to wash away with begged-for miracles and last month's hurt.

"I kinda hate you," she tells him simply. She must have said that a thousand times by now, likely as often as she's fancied herself in love with him, but all he does is straighten up from the hood of the _Falcon_ and emotionlessly stare at her.

"You want to try to fix the car?"

"Did you do this on purpose?" she accuses, bitter enough to instantly set him on edge.

His tone is just as dry. "Did I what? Magically stop the car? Pull us to a stop on a backroad?"

"I have no bars here."

"What bars?"

"My phone!" she calls, out of sight is out of hearing range, but his head pops up from the other side of the hood to frown at her.

"You don't need to shout. Get the keys and lock her up."

"You can't fix it?"

She isn't disappointed, no, but "It's not like I'm pretending the car's stalled so we can make out in the back," he huffs, his cheeks starting to tinge red.

There's also a smudge of oil or grease on his straight, strong nose, but the last thing she'll do is mention it. "I figured it was either that or you brought me out here to kill me like all the movies go." She turns the key out of the ignition and reaches for his door to switch the lock, the satisfying click, then she grabs her burgundy sweater, her purse.

"Life's not a movie, sweetheart," he drawls, and _oh_ , her heart just clenches as he slings his arm around her shoulders so easily, " _so_ ," he quotes. " _This boy and girl are making out, right, when on the radio they hear that this lunatic killer escaped from an insane asylum. So the boy goes for help, and the girl hears this, like, scratching noise_ \--"

"Shut up," she laughs, elbowing him in the ribs. "How close are we to anything important?"

"Just walk," he urges. It's nothing now to twist their fingers together, to hold hands palm to palm and arm to arm like it's a habit they've had for years, and he sighs quietly at the sun overhead, he isn't looking at her when she glances up, up, always up.

She remembers once being nearly the same height until one summer they just weren't; he was desperately out of her reach, she was so out of touch, she remembers lots of this vividly. The wishing, the aggravation. The youthful heartache and the exaggeration of teenage angst, how sometimes they'd lay feet to head and head to feet and would be the only other person they'd confide in or talk to.

"It is nice today," she offers up in amicability, the clear blue sky, the wind pulling at her hair.

It makes him cringe, a statement about the weather, and he just almost releases her hand, _almost_ \-- their skin is just a thread of hope together, just the tips of his fingers slotted through her knuckles, and he says it again, "I really didn't do this on purpose if that's what you're thinking. I wouldn't anyways, 'cause -- well."

She watches him grimace awkwardly, just not like he's upset here or like he's regretting it, but there's a reason he only kisses her five times the year she's seventeen. That's it.

\- -- - -- -

When she's fifteen, she gets exceptionally into literature.

Not just Jane Austen, not just Shelley, but the books that are novelties: Emily Dickinson, Richard Siken, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolfe, Dickens, Hemingway, Tolkien, Fitzgerald, Peterson, what may or not be the legit Book of Judas that really just tears her up because _why_ did he betray Him, why was his book taken out of the collection of what's supposed to be the truth?

Granted, she's also on the track team, the Dean's List, the student council body, the physics club, and while forcing herself to finish her homework instead of succumbing to the exhaustion of existence that wracks her body after five o' clock, she starts to wonder if maybe, another lifetime might have been more luck for her.

In reality, her crush on Ben, she expects it to fade assuming he'd eventually just leave or she would remember herself and move on -- not everything merits a happy ending and love just doesn't always happen at the end, sometimes it's better suited to the infinite feeling that ignites every single nerve ending when the perfect song plays or a desperate poem is read, one that leaves you breathless and aching and surprised these things can effect you so -- but they do, and they can, and that's beauty in itself, that's love, and she..

She wonders.

She never asks him that what if they never met because she doesn't want to consider that, but she does. She imagines him like he is now, almost twenty and without a clue at some Chinese place somewhere. She imagines bumping into him at the door under the jingling bells that would be mistletoe if this was winter, if this was his birthday, but he'd be too short-tempered and annoyed to pay any attention to who he nearly knocked over.

Maybe in a diner they'd just barely never meet, maybe she'd see him and would wish he would smile because he needs it like caffeine, like his pancakes have to have blueberries in them, yet that'd be the echo of an almost. Nothing knows lonely like the highway, nothing, not even God, so it wouldn't really matter if they'd never spoken. You can't miss what you've never known, right?

Almost four decades back and they'd meet at a peace rally, maybe, she can hear him cursing the war in Vietnam, she could see him hitch-hiking down a road with Poe and a beat-up guitar he'd play in the back, and maybe the two of them would fall in love that way, that would be the soundtrack.

In 1856, maybe he'd be a gunslinger, maybe she -- she doesn't know, but the roaring twenties, the Victorian Era, the time of the Black Death, the myth of Camelot. Perhaps they'd get their own fairytale or they would make their own; she would get to realize heroines existed for more than just something decorous and symbolic if not with the ingenuity they deserved, and maybe depending on what she did with her hair that day, whether or not it was raining.

Maybe they'd dance and relive emphatically their eloquence, different universes and fated realities that would give her a bit more of a chance with him, one that makes her less of a first world problem teenage girl, him less trying to be so mundane as a grown up ( _grow up_ , she tells herself), would he be a knight on a white horse? A dark steed? A calm, sweet-tempered pinto who would eat lots of apples?

He's too brooding to be the hero, she knows that, _she_ wants to be the hero herself, but he doesn't shine like the sidekick, the obligatory moral center, yet he's not really the dastardly villain either. At least -- he is when she's being unforgiving, when compassion makes her malignant and sharpens her teeth from hope to something that might want to see him burn, but hey. That can make him the damsel in distress without a doubt, she would revel in saving him from himself and finding the other heroes that have overcome their deepest, secret sorrows and trials, and that would bring hope back into his heart, he'd smile --

Those are her favorites. Seeing him anywhere and happy, seeing that light in his eyes she tries to catch when she tries to draw them.

She thinks about just being here. With him.

"You look serious," Finn says, and muscle memory, she instantly smiles and starts to laugh.

This is so ridiculous, all those poetic, meaningful possibilities, and she's here playing Monopoly with her best friends: Poe who's made three hundred and forty-six dollars off the light blue Baltimore stop but tosses them into jail for fun because why not, Finn who's sneaking her money under the table, then Ben who owns at least three-fourths of the board, who has hotels on more than half _including_ Park Place and it's blood-sucking neighbor, Ben who is so obsessed with being the banker, who has to be the shoe piece every fucking time.

If Poe isn't the thimble, though, he riots, and the longest game of this they've made it through was fourteen hours in painstaking duration, though in their defense, it was a long, dull morning a couple years ago that brightened considerably. Every year they've played this game at least eight times.

Every time she's lost without fail, and honestly, she thinks they'd be more merciful, but maybe somewhere else, maybe a different life that would come -- she's paces away from Boardwalk, and her luck here isn't that great.

\- -- - -- -

 _"That woman sure is in a hurry," Lando remarks in that swarthy tone he has, leaning against the_ Falcon _like something out of a dimestore novel._

_Han hopes for just a beat, tucked under the car's hood 'cause Lando don't know jack about this baby's maintenance, that it's her, her familiar, determined gait, but why look up when people look the same coming towards you as they do walking away?_

_And she did._

_Well, metaphorically, he called her up and said he'd be leaving right now three days ago in case she wanted to give him a good-bye kiss, and she said why, she never wanted to see him again, thank you very much, and then he said she had to stop deluding herself, and she shouted, 'Well, I never!' in such an angry, hurt, betrayed voice that crackled in desperation on his side of the line, and he was so close to forgetting his plans and his next route and staying here as stationary as she is, but ultimately._

_He'd given her time and chances, and if she came back around, well, he knew he'd fall for her again, he'd be back here as quick as she's running apparently, "Nope," he says. He can hear her calling his name._

_"Oh, no," Lando says. His grin is nearly audible, too cat-and-cream, so Han takes the oily rags, slams down the hood. "That's the girl?"_

_"There's no girl," he protests. But give it three seconds, she's going to start being annoyed he hasn't acknowledged her running across the blocks to him and the whole city is about to witness it, they've talked themselves raw and opened themselves up bloody over the past. He just didn't have much to begin with so all that's left is the future, too much to put to words and she never tried, so. "That's not her."_

_"Are you sure?"_

_"Han!" she's shouting, more clearly now._

_"Yeah."_

_"You miscreant!" she accuses, and he can hear her heavy footfalls now, give it seconds until he can hear her angry breaths, "you -- you foofy-haired, you --!"_

_"Ouch," Lando winces, glancing to Han just in time to see his trademark offended face._

_"Hey," he defends. "I'm not -- hey! Don't throw that at me!"_

_"You weren't going to say good-bye?" she huffs, her face all red and splotchy, her suitcase laying abandoned on the sidewalk. "Where do you even think you're going? I doubt this car could get you out of the county!"_

_"So you came to fuss at me some more, you know, I heard you loud and squeaky over the telephone!"_

_"Oh!" she shouts at him. If she had a dime for each of these collective breaths it's like the universe is holding in anticipation, fear, confounded_ annoyance _, but like it'll calm her pounding heart still exerted from the run, she clasps her hand to her chest. "You're ridiculous."_

_"I'm missing the history between you two," Lando grins, a quip away from the charming act that's actually pretty ineffective if Han has to say so, but Leia's gaze is like steel soldered on him. Better men have combusted or turned to stone under it, yet all she does is flick her eyes left to the car._

_To him._

_"What then?" he asks her. A second slow and a few thousand dollars too short to register on her daddy's account, how she's dressed finally registers to him. Her suitcase, her getaway bag. He's shock-still, but because laughter is what he does to try hope, he snarks, "You gonna run away with me or something?"_

_"Please." She rolls her eyes at him even as she opens the door to the back, starts neatly putting her things in while he can't do much but gawk at her dumbly. In awe and in love and aggravation. God damn, though, him being awed is winning out. "I'm twenty. It's not running away anymore, Han, it's just called leaving."_

\- -- - -- -

And six, she's sixteen when she guesses that if she ever even was, she falls out of love with Ben Solo.

Now this was the year that has felt like she's been holding her breath safe and hopeful in her lungs, inhaling sharper each time he looks at her with what the lighting casts into meaning, and she could barely think some days. Him who she grins at so easily, him who she forgives without even blinking, him who's in this life she can remember, this is what it feels like crested under her heart, branching out with her vertebrae, she could barely breathe because him, him, _him_ , this is when he finally starts to really have an impact in her life.

This is when a part of her starts not to like it: seeing him with bruised knuckles, seeing him constantly driving away. The days he's in oil-stained coveralls are so much better than the early mornings he reeks of other people's alcohol, and the times he only smiles with just his eyes are nice, too, he's less guarded that way when he opens himself up like he's offering his feelings to her.

And she kinda wants none of that?

She's used to him being away now even though it annoys her, just so much more than that, he -- he always answers his phone when she calls him. By the second ring.

They won't talk for two weeks but then they'll nave a nonconsecutive conversation that lasts three days off and on and then an entire month, and he'll be around at random.

She slips on ice in the driveway while she's getting out of her car and he's laughing from the porch, he and his sweetened passionfruit tea lemonade are three people ahead of her in Starbucks, he's in the stands before she is to watch Finn play the last game of the season; more than it starts to seem he's always away, he always seems to be with her, too.

Behind her when she looks, if he's ever not on the other side of the line he's ten minutes away, he's driving her home, he's making her three boxes of macaroni and cheese because when opening the fully stocked cabinets, the fridge, she declared there was nothing to eat -- he's constantly around for her this year more then any before -- she's holding her breath and things are changing and she isn't ready for that.

So one day when she sees him across the yard, all shaded like he hasn't really been here at all, she doesn't feel a single thing.

She doesn't feel some acknowledgment of the future or this hope she's held onto longer than a grudge or every bad decision he's let her make. She's just a girl, but this isn't a story about her falling in love with him, no, though to him his life is still the prologue of a story where he's totally going to die by the hands of his perfect best friend, he'll fall so hard in love it'll kill him, it will,

Seven, what's left to say at the end of it all? What else is there to do when Marilyn said it best, tears are like pearls, remember you've set your tea down because time moves faster than presumed and changes so many things in its wake, blink, and the world just might fall away.

"Do you miss home?" she asks him, because it isn't her imagination how happy he sounds in who-knows-where with his uncle.

 _"No,"_ he answers close-lipped, smiling, a lie -- but she lets him have it.

 _Do you miss me_ , she means to ask, _are you okay, are you sleeping enough, are you staying hydrated, are you really on a farm right now with actual cows?_ but she can't say much else of anything into her phone, her knuckles white from gripping it so tight.

He moves on to telling her all about his stay, and like the good and the bad in everything that can have an edge if you sharpen it, the moment has passed her by. But so has his.

She doesn't scream at him _why_ , say this isn't just her anymore, it's him, what does he _fucking_ want and is she enough right now, _why won't you even look at me? Has this changed for us? Are you not as in love with me anymore as I am with you? What the hell happened?_

No, she doesn't scream at him any of that.

He will, though, he'll be the closest she's ever seen him to crying up until that point, and he'll be angry and loud as he stalks around. Rabid and crazed because he's hurt, because _God fucking damn it, Rey, when did this stop being enough? When did I? Baby,_ he could grovel and he could beg because they've been here before. They've flirted with this edge that could rift them apart, chasm them burning and blazing and alone and vulnerable without each other.

 _Can you tell me why?_ because they over-react. Because sometime's love is a powder keg, a tea kettle whistling like an engine about to combust, thinking regret for the second it takes a heart to crumble in loss for what hollow of it would remain without the smudged fingerprints of a better half.

Eighth, and he can't look at her bruises without wanting to impound his car, without wanting to cry. Her left side is mottled red, purple, ghastly, and painfully, she's twenty-four and this is what life does, you make a good decision and the universe has other ideas, laughter leaves you aching and falling apart at the seams, tearing at the rib bones for a breath you might never take again, this.

"Oh, my God," she was saying two days ago, "Ben, oh, my God, I hate you."

"Yeah," he agreed, smirking into her shoulder, pressing his hands into the pliability of her spine, the softness of her skin going all convex around him, polar and gravity and his and he wasn't doing anything, but she kept telling him to quit, to just.

"I never even thought you wanted kids!"

"Why on earth?"

"I don't know," she huffed, thoughtfully crinkling her nose, taking her time to twine herself all around him in his lap, her ankles around his spine, her hands curved over his shoulders. When she looked at him, though, she seriously could not, "Dude. Let's just do it. Just put a baby in me like right now, I seriously love you so much, Ben, oh my God. Please don't."

"Uh," he said, intelligently.

"Ben." She curled herself all around him, like a squid, with determination she tries to churn into reason sealing through his flesh hard against hers. Her eyelashes brushing against his cheek and his sigh a little too loud against the bridge of her nose, she put all her heart into his name again. "Sweetheart."

"Rey." He can't help it and she knows it, she dragged her nails lightly against his scalp and he was melting, he was just thinking about her.

"I love you. I do. But a baby? Right now? Can you start using condoms again? Can I boycott sex? Can we just go get ice cream?"

They did.

And he's thinking a lot about that. She's going to be perfectly fine. But she's not awake to talk him out of his head, to make good on all that patience love has always required when he's a terror to himself.

Ninth, and okay. She's never loved him as much as she does the year she's thirty-six. This is what life isn't; this is what love is, how age changes him into something that's no longer just hers, he's his own person, too, laughing so hard the mornings at their family breakfast table that milk comes out of his nose, _Captain Crunch_ something genetic if it was just yesterday like twenty-one years ago Ben was a boy and a man and son and father now all at once -- their daughter is ten years old tomorrow.

(Finn is possibly her favorite person in the whole world. She really likes the color green. The first time she cried over a book was last year and once upon _Little Women_ \-- that was the hardest betrayal her little girl heart had ever suffered, but _life's not like a book, Nugget. You want to go get ice cream?_

 _Always_ ), but it's so strange to Rey, this stretch of time and how it's stopped meaning anything to her when it's flesh in her hands, a shy smile, life that's a flicker of hurt, the aching sides of joy, yellow flowers on her dresser and all those instants her heart was in her throat and caged by her teeth. Learning how to say things like _sorry_ and _I do_ , ten --

"You know you're my best friend," Ben tells her quietly, brilliantly like he's starting to smile so unabashedly he's infectious.

She's nineteen, and the first time they have sex during a movie is the first time they ever have sex, only the credits have already rolled; they've missed the middle, the happy end, the after credit teaser for the next installment except that was seven years ago, and the film's been over for two and a half hours.

"I know that," she tells him, because this is when not touching him is akin to rather not having hands -- it never gets old but it's like they never will either. Everything is young and burning and is setting the routine of a habit that's only just become a novelty and something precious, something that chills through her or quakes her into something breathless and boneless.

The weight of him against her hips is bringing this into sharp clarity, though, it's brimming under her skin, it's charring her up and starting to burn tears behind her eyes because the way he's looking at her, _oh_ , that's got to be love.

He closes his eyes when she reaches up to touch his face, her fingertips a soft crest against his cheek, and she's.. she's feeling how nerves can cinder into a quiet kind of rush. A slow spread of confidence and assuredness that feels like this is right and hers, going to last indefinitely, as long as they can stand each other --

Somedays, they're ontop of the world, and he's lightly tracing his hands up her sides as he says it so softly, so startled, "Rey." There's something indescribable about his voice, but the way his lips part, the chaste way he's kissing her neck like it could be love-spun poetry with sacrilegious context, a part of her is starting to tremble under his steady palms. Some part of her might never recover from this, from him, since this -- this isn't the prologue of the story anymore, the tale where they're together, where it makes so much sense; her, her, she's his favorite person in the whole world.

"Yes," she's saying, so hapless, yes he's kissing her throat, he's feeling the curves of her skin that press and fit around him and solder them almost incoherent, "Ben."

"Do you --"

" _Yes_ ," she exhales, oh, God, okay, his fingers are hooked through the belt loops of her jeans, and this part's familiar, yes, but if it hurts too much, if it's awful, if she starts to cry -- okay. She's okay. She's just tearing at the seams like hypothetical hymen would soon because like, tampons, his fingers, hers, okay.

"Hey," he says, so tenderly that it silences everything else. All doubt and all nerves for the instant, they're.. they're faded to nothing but adoration in his brown eyes softening at her, gazing at her in such a way that her mouth goes dry and her heart starts to thud so hard in her chest he can likely feel it as close as he is to her, yet it's so piercing silent,

"You," she starts, all flustered and pink, "your breath smells like Skittles."

He just barely smiles at her. He lifts one of his hands up to brush her hair from her forehead, though, because he doesn't want his hand so close to her heat when he says this like he's running out of air, like just a moment, blink and it's gone, this is love thawing him from the inside out, he's never felt more right than he does with her. He loves.

She's all over his skin and set into his bones. "I'm sorry I ate them all," he sighs, she's grinning so wide, she can't help it.

"It's okay."

"Rey." It feels like she's holding fast onto his heart, and they don't want to let his go. "I've been -- I've been falling in love with you," he tells her, like lightning under his flesh, like common sense and the best decisions he's ever made, she's it. His best friend.

She doesn't know what she'd do without him. There has never, there has never been anything like this for either of them, but the way it makes her heart start, she's still.

"I shouldn't have said anything," he interprets, resting his forehead against her shoulder. "Oh, my God, I'm not trying to -- y'know."

"No," she gasps, starting to revel in how this is expanding her lungs, starting to feel like such a good pressure and weight encasing her in him in affection. "No." Then she feels her eyes honest to God start to water, it's too much excess feeling all built up inside of her, she's.. she's falling, too. She whispers, "Okay," and it sounds so vulnerable like forever, her face in his hands and the way his eyes are crinkling at the corners, oh.

_(They're so close that maybe they've actually made it; this is it, this is the start of an eternity, maybe, his rugged panting and her shallow breaths. The light streaming in shadowed blues through the dark curtains. The love here that's no more wistful and yearning or almost, it's just here and full and theirs._

_Shaking, unsteady, he holds her after, lets her quiver until she can stand or talk or laugh or move, say it back to him, I love you, I don't know what I'd do without you, you're my best friend.)_

"I've been falling for you, too," she tells him, letting it waver love into her tone, adoration into her bones.

Then all she's saying is _yes_.

**Author's Note:**

> You've all been so faithful to me over the past couple years. I really appreciate the community here and the closure and the kindness. So! Have this story back, loves; this one's for us.


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